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THE  TRAGEDY  OF  ARMENIA 


The 
Tragedy  of  Armenia 

A  Brief  Study  and  Interpretation 


BT 

BERTHA  S.  PAPAZIAN 


With  an  Introduction  by  Secretary  James  L.  Barton,  D.D. 
of  the  American  Board 


THE  PILGRIM  PRESS 
BOSTON  CHICAGO 


*>     *% 


COPTRIGHT  1918 

Bt  BERTHA  S.  PAPAZIAN 


THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 
BOSTON 


TO  THOSE 

WHO  COUNTED  HONOR  ABOVE  LIFE 

THE  ARMENIAN  DEAD 


384451 


FOREWORD 

This  little  book  springs  from  my  desire  to 
bring  to  the  attention  of  my  fellow  Americans 
the  claims  upon  our  sympathy  and  support  of 
a  great  little  nation,  which,  at  this  critical 
moment  of  world  history,  is  making  a  supreme 
effort  for  long-denied  liberation.  Armenia  is 
known  to  us  chiefly  through  her  sufferings. 
With  the  other  phases  of  her  story  we  are 
largely  unacquainted.  To  appreciate  fully 
the  justice  of  her  appeal  for  complete  emanci- 
pation, we  should  know  more  of  her  character 
and  of  the  part  she  has  played  in  the  past,  and 
in  the  present  war.  I  shall  be  happy  if  this 
little  book,  in  any  degree,  serves  this  end. 

Bertha  S.  Papazian. 

Cambridge,  Mass- 
October,  1918. 


INTRODUCTION 

Armenian  crucifixion  at  the  hand  of  the 
Turkish  Government  and  with  the  approval 
if  not  direct  co-operation  of  Germany,  has 
touched  the  heart  of  humanity.  The  world 
has  witnessed  one  of  the  most  ancient  and 
notable  of  all  the  races  of  history  subject  to 
protracted  attacks,  atrocious  beyond  the  power 
of  words  to  describe,  with  no  conceivable 
reason  except  to  exterminate  an  entire  people 
whose  chief  offence  was  industry  and  whose 
unforgivable  crime  the  profession  and  prac- 
tice of  Christianity. 

This  story  is  the  Armenian  side  of  one  of 
the  tragedies  of  ancient  and  modern  history, 
told  simply,  without  passion  and  harrowing 
details,  and  yet  with  directness  and  pathos 
commanding  our  profoundest  admiration. 

It  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  history  that  the 
Armenian  nation,  swept  with  almost  perpetual 
war,  persecution  and  massacre  for  many  long 
dark  centuries,  has  retained  its  beautiful  lan- 
guage, its  religion  and  its  national  soul,  and 


INTRODUCTION 


now  in  these  days  of  race  redemption  is  ready 
to  come  into  its  own  as  a  people  worthy  and 
capable  of  self-determination. 

The  Armenians,  by  their  loyalty  and  devo- 
tion to  the  cause  of  the  Allies  in  Russia, 
Turkey,  Persia  and  Palestine,  as  well  as  in  the 
armies  of  England,  France  and  the  United 
States,  cannot,  without  most  flagrant  display 
of  ingratitude,  be  ignored  when  the  status  of 
the  lesser  nations  is  decided. 

Belgium,  by  her  heroic  resistance  to  the 
atrocious  demands  of  Germany,  saved  Paris 
and  made  the  world  her  debtor;  so  Armenia, 
refusing  to  cast  in  her  lot  with  the  Central 
Powers  in  partnership  with  Islam,  stood  loyal 
to  the  Allies  and  made  it  impossible  for 
Germany  to  consummate  her  designs  in  the 
Caucasus  and  Eastern  Turkey. 

Serbia  and  Belgium  have  been  martyr 
nations  for  four  years,  Poland  and  Bohemia 
for  from  one  to  three  centuries;  but  Armenia 
has  been  in  virtual  bondage  for  a  jjipusand 
years,  during  which  period  she  has  kept  her 
home  fires  burning,  her  hopes  undimmed  and 
her  soul  unintimidated.  Armenia  lives  today, 
although  bleeding  and  stricken,  because  she 


INTRODUCTION 


was  worthy.  If  this  war  ends  and  the  final 
peace  treaties  are  written  and  the  Peace 
Congress  dissolves  without  Armenia's  obtain- 
ing her  independence  from  Moslem  rule  with 
every  opportunity  for  self-direction  and  self- 
expression  in  quietness  and  safety,  then  this 
war  will  in  so  far  have  been  fought  in  vain. 

We  ask  for  the  emancipation  of  Armenia 
from  the  rule  of  the  Turk  and  the  Russian, 
not  because  she  has  been  for  centuries  en- 
slaved, not  because  she  has  been  afflicted  as 
few  other  nations  have  suffered,  and  yet  has 
persevered;  not  for  pity  or  for  sympathy's 
sake,  but  in  the  name  of  justice  and  inherent 
right  to  live  as  a  free  people.  Tested  in  the 
furnace  of  the  centuries  of  affliction,  and 
weighed  in  the  balance  of  national  endow- 
ments, Armenians  have  demonstrated  their 
inherent  worth.  From  every  point  of  view 
and  measured  by  every  standard  of  national 
capacity,  they  have  a  right  to  demand  and 
expect  the  support  of  the  Allies  in  their  claims 
for  national  recognition. 

This  little  book  reveals  the  spirit  and  soul 
of  Armenia,  the  depths  of  the  longing  of  that 
ancient  yet  present  living  people,  the  height 


Xll  INTRODUCTION 

of  their  hopes  and  the  earnestness  of  their 
purpose.  We  have  been  accustomed  to  think 
of  the  Armenians  as  a  bleeding,  stricken 
nation,  and  to  them  our  sympathies  have 
flowed  in  substantial  expression.  Let  us  now 
think  of  them  as  rising  from  the  ashes  of 
their  persecution  into  a  newness  of  life,  and 
with  their  loyalty  to  the  eternal  principles  of 
democracy,  justice,  righteousness  and  brother- 
hood established,  let  us  heartily  welcome  them 
into  the  sisterhood  of  nations.  America, 
which  for  nearly  a  century  has  labored  for 
and  suffered  with  them  more  than  any  other 
western  nation,  should  be  the  first  to  champion 
their  cause  and  pledge  them  its  unchanging 
allegiance  and  support. 

James  L.  Barton. 


CONTENTS 

PAQE 

Foreword vii 

Introduction ix 

I    Pagan  Days .    .  1 

II    From  the   Conversion  to   the   Cru- 
sades       18 

III  Under  Turkish  Domination  and  the 

Spiritual  Renaissance 41 

IV  The  Rise  and  Influence  of  the  Near 

Eastern  Question 58 

V    After  the  Massacres 81 

VI    In  the  World  War 100 

VII    In  the  World  Court     128 

Notes 149 

Bibliography      159 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF  ARMENIA 


Lift  up  thy  head,  weep  not!    Holy  is  grief, 
And  great  and  wholesome.    Earth  naught  nobler 
knows 

Than  is  the  victim  brave  beneath  his  cross. 
'Tis  in  the  shadow  that  the  dawn-light  grows. 

The  black  destroyers,  the  red  torturers 
Shall  vanish  —  they  like  smoke  shall  disappear, 

And  from  thine  ashes  thou  shalt  rise  again, 

Made  young  by  suffering,  radiant,  bright  and  clear. 


Thou  shalt  come  forth  triumphant  from  these  shades; 

Stars  shall  thine  eyes  become,  and  sparkle  bright; 
Thy  wounds  to  radiant  roses  shall  be  changed, 

And  from  thy  whitened  hair  shall  spring  forth  light. 

Thou  at  the  opening  of  the  ways  shall  stand, 
And  break  the  bonds  that  held  thee  down  in  gloom. 

0  Mother,  rise!  thy  pains  were  childbirth  pangs; 
It  is  a  world  that  stirs  within  thy  womb! 

— From  the  "  Lullaby  for  Mother  Armenia  " 

By  Archag  Tchobanian. 

(Translated  into  English  by  Alice  Stone  Blackwell) 


The  Tragedy  of  Armenia 


Chapter  I 
PAGAN  DAYS 

ALTHOUGH  these  are  the  days  of  action 
rather  than  of  reflection;  although  the 
hurried  massing  of  millions  of  men  and 
of  billions  of  dollars,  the  building  of  immense 
docks  and  factories  and  railroads  and  hospitals 
and  camps,  of  fleet  upon  fleet  for  sea  and  sky, 
the  marshaling  of  labor,  the  organizing  of  huge 
civilian  populations,  the  endless  minutiae  of 
war,  are  taxing  all  the  energies  of  mankind 
to  the  uttermost,  there  is,  at  the  same  time, 
an  intensified  thinking  going  on,  often  sub- 
conscious, but  more  incisive  and  compelling 
than  any  we  have  experienced  in  many  a  long 
year.  The  ethical  and  intellectual  laws  about 
which  we  had  been  feebly  and  abstractedly 
debating  have  suddenly  become  as  imperiously 
real,  as  tangibly  evident,  as  any  demonstra- 
tion in  mathematics  or  physics.  We  know 
that  the  war  we  are  witnessing,  in  spite  of 


2  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

its  overwhelming  material  manifestations,  is 
nothing  other  than  an  immense  moral  up- 
heaval; that  it  is  the  innermost  become  outer- 
most; the  word  made  flesh.  And  we  are 
forced  to  recognize  the  irresistible  power  of 
Spiritual  Law. 

It  is  less  difficult  now  than  formerly  to 
present  the  claims  of  far-away  Armenia.  As 
sharers  in  the  same  peril  we  are  more  ready 
to  listen  and  consider.  We  dare  not,  as  be- 
fore, flee  with  the  cry  upon  our  lips,  "This  is 
too  sad  to  talk  about."  We  are  eager  to  hear 
all.  "The  greatest  tragedy  in  all  human 
history"  draws  more  and  more  near  to  us. 
Especially  when  we  realize,  as  more  and  more 
we  are  coming  to  do,  that  this  age-long 
agony,  from  even  the  contemplation  of  which 
the  selfish  world  has  shrunk,  typifies  in  little 
the  present  tremendous  conflict  between 
Darkness  and  Light,  and  that  it  is  the  sub- 
stratum and  occasion,  in  a  very  real  though 
indirect  and  negative  way,  of  the  world 
conflict. 

To  the  tragedy  of  tragedies,  only  the  Master 
Craftsman  could  have  designed  such  a  climax 
as  this.    A  small  and  distant  people,  pitifully 


PAGAN   DAYS 


praying  in  the  name  of  Liberty  and  Chris- 
tianity for  redemption  from  the  foe  of  both, 
appealing  in  the  midst  of  massacre  and  devas- 
tation to  its  treaty  rights — what  diplomat 
would  believe  that  the  neglect  to  heed  could 
entail  such  stupendous  consequences?  What 
sovereign  could  foresee  that  as  a  result  of  mere 
callous  disregard  of  moral  and  treaty  obliga- 
tions, a  new  sanction  would  be  given  to  inter- 
national treachery,  a  new  impetus  to  the 
claims  of  tyranny;  that  the  Kaiser  would 
seize  the  opportunity  to  make  common  cause 
with  the  Sultan;  that  bargains  would  be 
struck  to  neutralize  the  peril  of  international 
interference,  railroad  concessions  balancing 
against  murdered  human  beings,  and  banking 
concessions  against  outraged  womanhood, 
pillage,  and  arson;  that  pan-Islamic,  pan- 
Turanian  schemes  would  emerge  into  pros- 
pect, flattered  by  the  encouragement  of  a 
European  government  which  was  in  time  to 
reject  all  Christian  and  democratic  philosophy 
and  to  unite  its  creed  of  ruthlessness  and  brute 
force  to  that  of  the  Turk,  the  ancient  arch- 
enemy of  all  that  we  hold  dear? 

But  the  record  is  before  us,  and  it  is  only 


4  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

in  the  light  of  the  world  conflagration  that 
we  can  learn  its  full  import.  All  poetic 
justice  seems  blind  when  compared  with  the 
judgment  which  this  light  reveals.  One  reads 
in  profound  sorrow  mingled  with  admiration 
for  the  heroic  victims  of  this  international 
bad  faith,  of  these  unscrupulous  imperial 
designs,  and  with  shame  and  reprobation  in 
differing  degree  for  the  other  protagonists. 
And,  as  the  climax  approaches,  and  stern 
retributive  Justice  enters  and  the  fateful 
lightnings  of  her  terrible  swift  sword  enflame 
the  whole  world,  even  then  the  soul  can  but 
approve  the  awful  sentence  and  exclaim: 
"Mine  eyes  have  seen  the  glory  of  the  coming 
of  the  Lord!" 

One  despairs  of  being  able  to  summon  the 
idea  in  all  the  force  of  its  beauty  and  terror. 
One  longs  for  images  but  none  come  except 
those,  complex  and  majestic,  which  are  created 
only  through  long  contemplation  of  this  mag- 
nificent and  dolorous  history.  One  is  the  more 
embarrassed  in  the  task  because,  since  those 
dread  years  of  '95,  '96,  and  '09,  when  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  defenceless  Armenian  men, 
women,    and    children    were    slaughtered    in 


PAGAN   DAYS  5 

cold  blood  and  with  complete  impunity  by 
the  Turkish  overlords,  while  responsible 
Europe  looked  passively  on,  and  even  humane 
but  un-committed  America  seemed  unable  to 
interfere,  the  world  has  accepted  Armenia  as 
a  static  symbol  of  suffering.  It  has  seen  in 
her  merely  a  figure  with  hands  outstretched 
in  useless  supplication,  and,  except  for  the 
coin  which  it  has  given  her  for  bread,  it  has 
passed  on  without  other  thought  or  reaction. 

To  envisage  the  tragedy  as  involving  in  its 
course  the  flow  of  the  blood  of  all  nations  is, 
therefore,  not  only  to  give  it  its  true  political 
and  moral  bearing,  but  to  reveal  something 
of  its  own  inherent  Titanic  grandeur.  When 
the  Editor  of  The  World's  Work,  prefacing 
Ambassador  Morgenthau's  series  of  articles 
on  "Two  Years  of  War  in  Turkey,"  says: 
"Americans  who  wish  to  know  why  their  sons 
are  being  transformed  into  soldiers  can  look 
to  this  narrative  of  events  in  the  minaretted 
city  on  the  Bosphorus,"  he  indicates  the  power 
and  sweep  of  the  forces  that  have  been  there 
at  work.  With  "Berlin  to  Bagdad"  in  mind 
as  the  slogan  of  the  projected  pan-Germania, 
the  failure  of  the  Powers  to  fulfill  their  treaty 


THE   TliAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 


obligations  to  Armenia  in  the  years  '95  and 
'96,  when  the  call  most  emphatically  came 
for  the  decent  solution  of  the  Near  Eastern 
question,  becomes  clearly  an  evasion  of  duty 
the  most  fate-laden  in  all  history.  And  the 
aspirations  and  unaided  struggles  of  Armenia 
assume,  accordingly,  a  majesty  and  a  signifi- 
cance absolutely  unsurpassed. 

But,  unfortunately,  both  for  us  of  America, 
and  for  the  West  in  general,  as  well  as  for 
the  Armenians  themselves,  the  spiritual 
glories  of  this  great  national  drama  have  been 
all  but  hidden  from  foreigners,  except  for  the 
few,  who,  either  because  of  direct  contact 
with  this  people  or  some  other  incentive, 
have  been  led  especially  to  that  rich  field  of 
research  which  has  to  do  with  their  extraor- 
dinary history.  For  in  modern  universal  his- 
tory they  do  not  appear,  their  political  identity 
having  become  lost  in  that  of  their  ulti- 
mate conqueror.  And  as  the  Turk  himself, 
until  about  the  middle  of  the  last  century, 
was  virtually  ostracized  from  European  civil- 
ization, the  Armenians  passed  into  an  oblivion 
only  the  more  complete.  When,  therefore, 
toward   the  end   of  the  nineteenth   century, 


PAGAN   DAYS  7 

they  appeared  before  the  world  as  the  victims 
of  cruelties  and  injustices  indescribable  and 
unredressed,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at, 
perhaps,  that  their  name  should  come  to  be 
regarded  chiefly  as  one  of  most  shocking  hope- 
lessness and  dread. 

But  this  indicated  a  generally  thoughtless 
habit  of  mind.  A  prolonged  national  ordeal 
implies  a  great  national  soul,  and  ought  in 
itself  to  have  suggested  the  splendidly  heroic 
calibre  of  the  people  and  of  their  antecedent 
history.  Not  only  as  the  victims  of  colossal 
wrongs,  but  as  a  force  singularly  noble  and 
dynamic  ought  we  to  know  this  race, — 
one  of  the  most  ancient — which  today  in  spite 
of  oppression  and  persecutions  that  would 
either  have  tamed  or  annihilated  one  of  less 
resolute  fibre,  is  still,  wherever  possible,  lavish- 
ing its  remaining  strength  on  behalf  of  an 
emancipated  world ! 

We  cannot  find  in  history  a  parallel  to  this 
story.  We  turn  to  art  for  terms  of  comparison 
and  find  none  except  in  the  tragic  Greek 
concept  of  Prometheus  chained  to  the  rocks 
and  torn  by  vultures  for  having  brought  light 
to  the  world.     Even  the  artistic  imagination 


8  THE   TRAGEDY  OF  ARMENIA 

has  never  compassed  so  extended  a  panorama 
of  undying  aspiration  and  obstinate  disaster. 
How  inadequate  is  "Polyeucte,"  Corneille's 
suggestive  embodiment  of  the  purely  religious 
side  of  the  struggle !  And  yet  it  is  to  literary 
tragedy — to  that  of  classic  Greece — that  the 
mind  must  hark  back  if  it  would  find  any- 
where, though  on  an  immeasurably  slighter 
scale,  a  story  told  with  an  equally  perfect 
symmetry,  an  equal  concentration  of  interest, 
a  terror  and  pity  equally  progressive. 

For  dramatic  time,  the  tragedy  is  set  amid 
the  rolling  centuries.  For  place,  we  have  a 
stage  unsurpassed  in  its  grandeur  and  historic 
association.  And  for  chief  protagonists,  an 
Aryan1  people,  independent,  inquiring  and 
original  of  spirit,  adventurous,  practical  and 
liberty-loving,  whom  fate  leads  beyond  the 
frontiers  of  Europe  and  their  brothers  in 
blood  to  where  the  mighty  headland  of  Asia 
is  washed  by  the  Black  and  Caspian  seas. 

Over  twenty-five  hundred  years  ago  the 
actors  entered  the  stage,  little  dreaming  that 
they  were  treading  soil  destined  to  become 
"the  most   coveted  highway  of  the  world." 


PAGAN   DAYS  9 

Before  them  as  they  marched  eastward  from 
Thrace,  Thessaly,  Phrygia,  stood  the  great 
pinnacle  of  Ararat,  yet  to  become  a  "memo- 
rial shaft"  to  millions  of  their  martyred 
descendants.  Snow-capped,  towering  seven- 
teen thousand  feet  into  the  sky,  it  stood 
companioned  by  its  sister  peaks.  In  the 
general  region  were  other  mountains,  among 
them  the  snow-crowned  Varag.  Encircled  by 
some  of  these,  upon  the  shoulders  of  the 
tableland,  was  the  intensely  blue  salt  lake  of 
Van;  and  breaking  from  the  mountain  and 
hillsides  were  beautiful  fountains  and  streams, 
and  great  rivers,  two  of  which,  the  Tigris 
(ancient  Hiddekel)  and  the  Euphrates,  Jew- 
ish history  tells  us,  bordered  the  Garden  of 
Eden. 

But  the  legend  of  Adam  and  Eve,  and  of 
the  Creator  who  walked  in  the  Garden;  the 
ark  of  Noah  upon  the  peak  of  Ararat;  the 
sojourn  of  Noah  and  his  companions  for 
some  time  upon  the  crest  of  Subhan  Dagh — 
a  strictly  Armenian  legend — these  were  to  play 
their  part  in  kindling  patriotic  imagination 
only  at  a  later  day.  The  first  step  was  to 
maintain  tribal  integrity  against  the  encroach- 


10  THE   TRAGEDY  OP  ARMENIA 

merits  of  surrounding  despots.  And,  charac- 
teristically, the  first  episode  in  the  national 
drama — it  comes  to  us  in  a  burst  of  idealized 
patriotic  glory — is  the  victory  of  the  freedom- 
loving  Haig,  the  founder  of  the  first  Armenian 
dynasty,  over  the  Assyrian  tyrant,  Bel. 

A  succession  of  many  centuries  followed, 
marked  by  the  vicissitudes  which  are  the 
usual  lot  of  a  border  state,  and  during  which 
indigenous  tribes  evidently  became  fused  with 
the  race  of  Haig,  their  great  Aryan  conqueror 
and  chief.  More  and  more  extended  grew  the 
kingdom  under  a  long  line  of  kings  of  this 
Haikean  dynasty  until  toward  the  beginning 
of  the  second  dynasty,  the  Arshagoonian, 
under  Tigranes  the  Great,  it  included  Media, 
Assyria,  Cilicia,  and  Phoenicia.  To  conflicts 
with  Assyria,  Babylonia,  Media,  Parthia, 
and  Persia  had  been  added  conflicts  with 
Macedonia  and  Rome.  Again  and  again  we 
see  these  mighty  forces  victorious,  but  only 
partially  so.  For  the  Armenians,  though 
frequently  overpowered,  were  never  overcome. 
By  statecraft,  and  by  their  remarkable  power 
of  assimilating  their  enemies  no  less  than  by 
force   of   arms,   they   continued   to   maintain 


PAGAN    DAYS  11 

their  race  and  its  traditions  against  all  odds. 
Some  innate  and  irresistible  moral  stamina 
enabled  them  to  draw  to  their  cause  even  the 
Persian  satraps,  Parthian  princes,  and  Roman 
and  Seleucian  governors  who  at  times  ruled 
over  them.  Under  such  suzerainty,  they 
often  gathered  strength  to  rise  against  the 
old  or  against  some  new  oppressor,  who,  bent 
upon  the  conquest  of  Europe  or  of  Asia, 
swept  the  country  from  east  to  west,  or  from 
west  to  east. 

But  war  with  Rome,  instigated,  during  a 
period  of  unprecedented  strength  and  glory, 
by  the  Parthian  king,  Mithridates,  the 
father-in-law  of  Tigranes;  wars  between 
Parthia  and  Rome  and  between  Rome  and 
Persia  were  to  reduce  still  further  the 
Armenian  dominion  to  the  intolerable  posi- 
tion of  a  strictlv  buffer  state.  It  became  a 
perpetual  battle  ground,  now  tributary  to 
Rome,  now  to  Parthia;  but  even  when  thus 
tributary,  Armenian  leaders  of  royal  and 
ancient  clans  or  houses,  the  Ardzrounians, 
the  Pagratians,  the  Seunians  and  others, 
struggling  independently  both  against  their 
would-be  masters  and  against  outlying  states, 


12  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

succeeded  not  only  in  maintaining  the  stand- 
ard of  Armenian  independence,  but  even  in 
establishing  new  principalities.  And  as  the 
political  power  waned,  the  national  character 
became  more  and  more  clearly  defined  and  the 
longing  for  a  truly  national  life  more  intense. 

In  the  kaleidoscopic  pageant  of  these 
turbulent  centuries,  the  stage  is  peopled  with 
mighty  historic  figures.  Confronting  Haig, 
Aram,  Ardashes,  Ara,  Tigranes  and  the 
other  Armenian  kings,  are  Bel,  Tiglath- 
Pileser,  Sardanapalus,  Semiramis,  Cyrus, 
Darius,  Alexander  the  Great,  Mithridates, 
Sulla,  Crassus,  Pompey,  Mark  Antony. 
Abroad,  we  see  the  Armenian  king  and  his 
followers  at  the  siege  of  Troy,  on  the  side 
of  Priam,  or  at  Nineveh,  at  its  fall;  or,  in 
less  fortunate  days,  against  a  background  of 
torches  and  garlands,  we  see  him  kneeling — 
a  vassal  king — to  receive  the  crown  from  Nero 
in  the  area  before  the  palace  at  Rome;  or  we 
see  him  captive,  fettered  with  golden  chains, 
a  token  of  his  own  triumph  which  Mark 
Antony  sent  to  Cleopatra. 

In  the  politico-social  life  of  this  extended 


PAGAN   DAYS  13 

period,  we  catch  glimpses  of  other  dramatic 
figures:  as  prisoner  of  war,  "a  noble  Hebrew 
prince,  Shempad  by  name"  who  affiliated  him- 
self with  his  conquerors,  and  became  the 
founder  of  one  of  the  royal  households; 
the  sons  of  Sennacherib  who,  after  having 
assassinated  their  imperial  father,  "escaped 
into  the  land  of  Armenia,"  were  received  by 
the  court  and  married  Armenian  princesses; 
and  Hannibal,  who  fleeing  from  the  vengeance 
of  Rome,  took  refuge  first  with  Antiochus  of 
Seleucia,  and  then  with  Ardashes  of  Armenia 
for  whom  he  drew  the  plan  of  the  city  of 
Ardashat. 

Fortified  castles  of  oriental  splendor,  cita- 
dels, towered  walls,  laden  caravans  and  river 
argosies,  market  places,  caravanseries,  temples 
to  the  gods — to  those  of  Persia  and  Greece 
and  other  foreign  countries  as  well  as  to  those 
of  Armenia — make  up  the  shifting  back- 
ground of  the  scenes.  For  both  through  the 
foreign  conquests  imposed  upon  her,  and 
through  her  own  commercial  genius,  the 
nation  is  in  contact  with  and  is  at  school  to 
the  world.  The  costumes  of  the  characters 
are    vivid;    especially    do    we    hear    of    this 


14  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

during  the  reign  of  Tigranes,  when  the  dress 
of  the  period  is  described  as  "beautiful  enough 
to  transform  even  the  most  ugly."  This,  of 
course,  refers  to  that  of  the  favored  classes, 
who  also,  men  as  well  as  women,  wore  heavy 
gold  chains  and  necklaces  and  "rings  of  gold 
in  their  ears."  The  king  wears  now  a  wreath 
of  pearls,  or  a  crown  set  with  immense  rubies, 
placed  upon  his  head  by  one  of  his  own 
Pagratian  nobles,  who  alone  enjoyed  this 
privilege;  or  again  the  crown  and  purple  of 
Rome  as  in  the  days  of  Antoninus  Pius,  who 
sent  these  tokens  of  royalty  to  the  Armenian 
king  by  special  embassy.  Even  the  pages  of 
the  royal  households  wear  "rich  vestments." 
There  is  much  use  of  fur.  The  costumes  of 
the  military  officers  and  soldiery  add  to  the 
color  of  the  picture.  In  the  days  of  Herodotus 
"their  arms  are  like  those  of  the  Phrygians." 
They  wear  helmets  of  laced  leather  and  carry 
spears  and  shields.  Later  we  see  them  in  iron 
armor,  charging  magnificently  upon  the  horses 
for  which  their  country  was  famous,  and  which 
enabled  the  Armenian  soldiery  to  become  "the 
best  cavalry  in  the  world." 

In  the  temple  schools,  religious  and  ritual- 


PAGAN   DAYS  15 

istic  lore  is  taught,  and  on  the  tablets  in  the 
temple  libraries  are  the  archives  of  priest  and 
king  for  the  enlightenment  of  patriot  and 
scholar.  A  multitude  of  cults  claim  each  its 
votaries.  As  the  people  come  under  the  sway 
now  of  Macedonia,  now  of  Rome,  now  of 
Persia,  each  tries  to  impose  upon  them  her 
own  particular  culture.  The  reflective  and 
cosmopolitan  mind  of  the  race  is  turned  upon 
the  thought  of  each,  even  while  the  basic 
allegiance  to  national  tradition  is  being 
fostered  popularly  by  the  bards — especially 
those  of  Coghtn,  a  locality  famous  alike  for  its 
minstrels  and  its  vineyards — who  go  from 
castle  to  castle  and  from  festival  to  festival 
singing  the  cosmic  myth  of  the  old  Armenian 
sun-god,  Vahakn,  or  the  more  human  romances 
of  love  and  battle  which  marked  the  lives  of 
the  ancient  kings.  From  the  lips  of  these 
singers  the  people  learn  of  the  frightful 
dragons  slain  by  the  early  heroes,  the  dragon 
being  their  symbol  for  mighty  enemy  na- 
tions. They  hear,  too,  of  the  generous  largess 
of  their  own  kings,  in  the  songs  which 
recount  glowingly  that  it  "rained  gold  when 
Ardashes  became  King,"  and  that  the  "pearls 


16  THE   TRAGEDY  OF  ARMENIA 

fell  in  showers  when  Queen  Satenik  became 
a  bride." 

Banquets,  too,  in  honor  of  the  gods;  great 
festival  days  which  bring  the  people  to  the 
groves  of  sacred  poplars  by  the  leaves  of 
which  the  priests  divine;  or  to  the  banks  of 
the  rivers  where  white  horses  and  cattle  are 
offered  to  the  waves;  to  the  fetes  champetres 
on  Navasard,  the  New  Year,  when  libations 
are  poured  to  Aramazd;  or  to  the  temples 
where  flocks  of  doves  are  loosed  and  roses 
strewn  in  honor  of  the  goddess  Anahit, — all 
these  festivals  and  ceremonials  serve  to  unite 
the  people,  to  develop  the  national  conscious- 
ness, to  engender  what  Tchobanian  calls  "the 
love  of  the  race  for  itself." 

But  the  racial  soul,  though  preserved  and 
differentiated  through  centuries  of  struggle 
and  at  the  cost  of  immense  suffering,  is  none 
the  less,  by  the  first  century  of  our  era, 
seemingly  in  solution.  Natural  inclination  as 
well  as  force  of  circumstances  are  drawing 
the  people  unconsciously  but  irresistibly 
toward  the  culture  of  the  Romans,  and  of  the 
Greeks,  their  one-time  congeners  of  Thrace 
and  Thessaly.     But  Persia,  their  formidable 


PAGAN   DAYS  17 

eastern  neighbor,  has  also  a  noble  culture  and 
an  inflexible  will  to  conquer,  and  it  would 
seem  unavoidable,  and  therefore  the  part  of 
wisdom,  to  yield  much  to  her. 

A  higher  destiny,  however,  awaited  the 
Armenians.  Neither  to  the  Romans  nor  to 
the  Persians  were  they  to  surrender  their 
spiritual  identity.  The  vision  of  a  new  order 
was  to  take  possession  of  their  souls — an 
order  differing  religiously,  socially,  and  polit- 
ically from  any  that  had  preceded  it.  It  was 
a  moment  fraught  with  worlds  of  how  much 
significance  and  peril,  when,  at  the  dawn  of 
the  Christian  era,  politically  in  vassalage  to 
Pagan  powers,  the  race  turned  its  eyes  toward 
Judea. 


Chapter  II 

FROM  THE  CONVERSION  TO  THE 
CRUSADES 

THE  nature  and  significance  of  the  Chris- 
tian phase  of  the  Armenian  struggle  is 
mirrored  in  the  gigantic  conflict  which 
is  going  on  before  our  eyes  today.  It  is,  and 
has  been,  chiefly,  an  aspect  and  a  continua- 
tion of  the  terrific  combat  which  threatened 
to  annihilate  Europe  at  the  time  of  the 
Mohammedan  invasions^  It  is  the  conflict  of 
two  irreconcilables :  the  philosophy  of  Christ 
with  its  inherent  democracy  and  its  progres- 
sive implications,  its  divine  discontent,  and 
that  of  Islam — especially  of  Turkish  Islam — 
with  its  autocratic  and  fatalistic  leanings. 
And  this,  of  course,  is  the  fundamental  issue 
of  the  present  struggle.  The  fact  that  Ger- 
man "iron  crosses"  figure  on  the  side  of  the 
enemy;  the  fact  that  the  German  deification 
of  Force  and  of  the  Sword  goes  by  some 
other  name  in  no  way  alters  the  identity  of 
the  issue.     Teuton  and  Turk  have  united  to 


FROM  CONVERSION  TO  CRUSADES        19 

evoke  again  the  abhorrent  vision  of  world 
conquest  in  the  name  of  a  God  of  Battles. 
Had  the  Mohammedans  of  India,  Persia, 
China,  Arabia,  and  Egypt  responded  to  the 
Berlin-Constantinople  invitation  to  rise  in 
Holy  War  against  the  Christian  world,  we 
should  now  be  experiencing  the  full  truth  of 
this  statement  in  all  its  devastating  import. 

The  Armenian  phase  of  this  struggle  of 
ethically  inspired  democracy  against  theo- 
cratic absolutism  covers  a  period  of  about 
fifteen  hundred  years.  In  the  case  of  indi- 
viduals and  communities,  it  began  even  earlier 
than  that,  no  doubt  in  the  first  century  to 
which  the  Armenians  trace  the  beginnings  of 
their  martyrology,  in  the  person  of  the 
Princess  Santoukhd.  The  establishment  of 
Christianity  as  a  national  religion  by  King 
Tiridates,  in  the  year  301,  suggests  a  long 
antecedent  development  of  the  faith  among 
the  people  in  general,  and  the  usual  price  in 
suffering.  But  this  is  partly  a  matter  of  civil 
history.  Exclusively  religious  wars  do  not 
appear  to  have  occurred  until  some  time  after 
the  official  conversion,  although  a  conflict  of 
this  sort  is  recorded  in  the  year  232,  with 


20  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

Ardashir  of  Persia  as  instigator.  And  in  the 
year  311,  because  of  its  religious  beliefs,  the 
nation  had  incurred  the  hostility  of  Rome  to 
such  an  extent  that,  according  to  Eusebius, 
the  Emperor  Maximianus  declared  general 
war  upon  it.  This  particular  disaster  was, 
however,  averted  by  the  accession  of  Constan- 
tine  to  the  throne. 

With  the  bare  fact  of  a  Christianity  in- 
eradicable from  the  people,  and  for  which 
they  have  suffered  greatly,  we  are  all  more 
or  less  familiar  through  the  later  stories  of 
Turkish  persecution.  But  it  is  a  fact  which 
has  lost  rather  than  gained  because  of  a  too 
casual  iteration.  In  centuries  dominated  by 
commercial  considerations — like  the  beginning 
of  the  present,  and  the  past — it  had  no  prac- 
tical weight  whatever.  As  an  incentive  to 
armed  intervention  on  their  behalf,  we  know 
that  it  utterly  failed,  Christianity  as  a  rally- 
ing point,  or  as  an  inspired  conviction  and  rule 
of  life,  having  everywhere  lost  its  force  in  the 
West. 

But  circumstances  have  helped  to  make  of 
Armenia  the  unceasing  champion  of  this 
stupendous  cause.    Among  nations  she  is  the 


FROM  CONVERSION  TO  CRUSADES        21 

mother  of  Red  Cross  knights  par  excellence. 
Persecution  has  only  increased  her  fidelity 
and  her  courage  and  clarified  her  vision. 
Proximity  and  subjection  to  anti-Christian 
rule  have  enabled  her  to  estimate  properly 
the  menace  of  this  sovereignty.  And  even 
as  she  has  struggled  against  it  throughout 
her  history,  so  has  she  warned  Europe  of  its 
danger  and  invoked  her  aid. 

To  understand  her  story  we  must  therefore 
re-orient  ourselves  with  regard  both  to  the 
idea  "Christianity,"  and  to  the  idea  "tragedy" 
of  which  Christianity  has  been  in  large  part 
the  occasion.  We  must  cease  to  see  in  them 
mere  fortuitous  circumstance.  It  was  the 
heroic  adoption  and  defence  of  an  exalted  life 
principle  which  has  brought  the  Armenians 
so  much  suffering.  And  the  consequences  are 
not  to  be  regarded  as  meaningless  disaster, 
but  as  genuine  tragedy  in  the  classic  sense: 
a  doom  fashioned  for  itself,  in  large  measure, 
by  high  and  exceptional  character  through 
uncompromising  devotion  to  some  great  end. 

Let  us  remember,  first,  that  the  pioneer 
adoption  of  Christianity  by  the  Pagan  Arme- 


22  THE  TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

nian  state  was  a  consciously  creative  act, 
and  that  it  required  more  hardihood,  origi- 
nality and  hospitality  of  mind  than  was 
involved  in  the  adoption  of  this  religion  after 
it  had  received  the  sanction  of  Rome  and 
Byzantium.  It  was,  in  fact,  a  more  mo- 
mentous step  than  that  which  had  led  their 
ancestors  to  leave  their  European  brothers 
and  strike  out  across  the  highlands  of  Asia; 
although  it  signified  in  the  realm  of  ideas 
something  of  the  same  capacity  for  adventure 
and  leadership.  And  shortly  this  tendency 
was  to  receive  further  illustration  along  still 
other  moral  lines. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  Armenian 
church  which  St.  Gregory  founded  and  King 
Tiridates  proclaimed  some  years  before  the 
proclamation  of  Constantine,  was  to  remain 
an  independent  church,  in  spite  of  persistent 
overtures  from  both  the  Roman  and  Greek 
churches,  and  the  practical  advantages  which 
might  naturally  have  accrued  from  alliance 
with  either.  Second,  that  it  was  to  assume 
very  early  in  its  history  a  democratic  char- 
acter, the  election  of  the  Catholicos  and  other 
clergy  by  popular  consent  being  one  of  its 


FROM  CONVERSION  TO  CRUSADES         23 

outstanding  features.  And  third,  that  al- 
though originally  of  an  austere  primitive 
simplicity,  it  soon  appeared  too  ritualistic  to 
a  portion  of  this  spiritually  progressive  people, 
for  as  early  as  the  fifth  century  there  appeared 
in  Armenia  a  powerful  and  much  persecuted 
Protestant  sect,  the  Thonrakians,  to  the  in- 
fluence of  which  as  it  spread  under  various 
names  through  Europe,  historians  attribute 
the  Reformation,  and  John  Fiske,  in  his 
Beginnings  of  New  England,2  the  Puritan 
movement  which  has  moulded  the  character  of 
our  American  institutions. 

Thus  we  see  this  politically  subject  Aryan 
race  whose  lot  was  cast  beyond  the  frontiers 
of  Europe,  expressing  and  applying  what  was 
later  to  become  a  distinguishing  feature  of 
the  Western  world :  the  right  of  the  individual 
to  be  heard  in  matters  civil  and  religious. 
"In  politics  they  leaned  toward  Democracy," 
comments  Fiske  in  writing  of  these  early 
Protestants.  One  cannot  imagine  a  more 
fatal  circumstance  than  that  which  placed 
such  a  people  in  such  an  environment.  Even 
had  they  been  able  to  accommodate  themselves 
to   the   idea   of   submission    in   religion   and 


24  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

politics  it  would  scarcely  have  solved  their 
problem.  There  would  still  have  remained 
the  racial  affinity  which  bound  them  to  Europe 
and  which  at  the  time  of  the  Crusades  caused 
Melik  Nasr,  the  Egyptian  Sultan,  to  declare 
to  Leo  II,  their  king,  who  had  applied  to 
him  for  a  treaty  of  peace:  "I  will  never  make 
peace  with  you  until  you  promise  on  oath 
not  to  hold  any  correspondence  or  commu- 
nication with  Western  nations."  The  bond 
at  that  time  was  not  solely  religious:  it  was 
also  social  and  commercial.  It  was  due  to  the 
instinctive  sympathy  of  the  people  for  their 
kin  and  for  all  that  savored  of  progress.  And 
even  today  this  same  spirit  is  making  itself 
felt.  At  this  very  moment,  poorly  equipped 
and  at  the  mercy  of  an  absolutely  pitiless  foe, 
their  influence  in  the  Caucasus  counts  on  the 
side  of  America  and  the  Allies,  and  so  it  is 
in  Mesopotamia,  Palestine,  France — wherever 
they  are  to  be  found.  If  there  is  an  instance 
of  similar  ingrained  constancy  to  heroic  ideals 
under  equally  desperate  conditions,  history 
has  not  recorded  it.  May  we  not  hereafter 
hear  less  of  Armenia  as  victim  and  more  of 
her  as  transcendent  heroine? 


FROM   CONVERSION   TO    CRUSADES  25 

To  follow  this  story  from  the  earliest 
Christian  days  to  the  time  when  the  night  of 
Turkish  oppression  settled  upon  the  land  is  to 
traverse  a  period  every  whit  as  rugged  and 
various,  as  picturesque  and  colorful,  as  were 
the  most  glorious  days  of  the  pagan  era.  If 
we  pass  over  the  trembling  dawn  of  the 
Conversion  and  come  to  the  fourth  and  fifth 
centuries,  we  shall  see  all  over  this  still 
politically  distracted  period  evidences  of  an 
intensification  of  the  national  spirit  hitherto 
unexampled. 

Although  divided  at  this  time  between 
Persia  and  Byzantium,  the  people,  rising  as 
one  in  response  to  the  new  ideal,  mustered 
abundant  evidence  of  the  strength  of  their 
moral  and  intellectual  power.  With  an  un- 
compromising zeal — much  to  be  regretted 
from  the  historical  and  artistic  points  of  view 
— they  succeeded  in  virtually  obliterating  all 
traces  of  their  pagan  life  and  culture.  But 
they  created  in  its  stead  another  civilization. 
The  pagan  temples,  and  the  connecting 
libraries,  so  rich  in  the  archives  of  king  and 
priest  that  histories  had  previously  been 
compiled  from  them,  were  regrettably  demol- 


26  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

ished.  Fire  altars  and  the  golden  statues  of 
the  divinities  met  with  the  same  fate.  But 
upon  the  spot  where,  according  to  Neumann, 
had  stood  a  statue  of  Hercules,  there  rose  the 
Mother  Church  of  Armenia,  and  a  new  and 
Christian  art  came  into  being.  In  the  noble 
architecture  which  was  evolved,  scholars  see 
the  foreshadowing  of  the  Gothic ;  in  the  music, 
poignant,  austere,  and  characteristic,  lies  high 
evidence  of  esthetic  power;  but  it  is  in  the 
literature,  which  sprang  into  being  almost 
miraculously,  that  we  may  most  clearly  see 
evidence  of  the  fervid  spiritual  creativeness 
which  the  new  life  concept  occasioned. 

In  this  aspect  of  the  drama  is  foreshadowed 
in  intensified  and  triumphant  form  that  in- 
tellectual activity  and  hunger  which  was  to 
be  characteristic  of  the  Armenians  through- 
out their  subsequent  history.  To  Rome,  to 
Athens,  to  Byzantium,  to  Alexandria,  flocked 
the  mature  scholars  and  the  aspiring  students, 
just  as  during  the  modern  renaissance  they 
were  to  flock  to  the  European  and  American 
centers  of  learning.  The  Armenian  alphabet 
was  invented  at  this  time,  as  a  more  fitting 
"medium  by  which  to  transcribe  the  thoughts 


FROM   CONVERSION  TO   CRUSADES  27 

of  the  race  than  had  been  the  foreign  char- 
acters— Syriac,  Greek,  and  Pelhevi — hitherto 
used  by  them.  Great  care  was  lavished  upon 
the  study  of  the  Greek  and  Armenian  tongues, 
and,  as  a  result,  the  whole  Bible  had  been 
incomparably  translated  from  the  Greek  by 
the  year  410,  and  the  Golden  Age  of  Arme- 
nian classic  literature  had  begun.  Moreover, 
the  people  had  secured  for  themselves  one  of 
the  greatest  assets  of  national  life, — a  noble 
and  subtle  literary  language.  Referring  to 
this  movement,  Dr.  Dwight,  the  American 
Orientalist,  says: 

"Rarely  have  men  in  any  age  or  country 
made  more  energetic,  praiseworthy  and  suc- 
cessful efforts  in  the  cultivation  of  letters 
than  those  whose  names  are  recorded  in  the 
annals  of  Armenian  literature  during  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries.  Their  names  are 
and  will  be  deserving  of  the  most  honorable 
remembrance  wherever  real  merit  is  appre- 
ciated and  the  love  of  letters  cherished." 

But  Persia  was  viewing  with  increasing 
hostility  this  national  awakening  and  rap- 
prochement  with  Europe.     Already,  accord- 


28  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

ing  to  historians,  she  had  entered  into  secret 
alliance  with  India  against  the  so-called 
Western  principle.  She  rightly  estimated 
that  the  Christian  and  progressive  tendencies 
of  the  new  order  would  alienate  the  Arme- 
nians irrevocably  from  the  pagan  tyrannies. 
So  she  launched  upon  the  country  fierce  re- 
ligious wars,  and,  in  the  name  of  her  King, 
Hazgherd,  summoned  Armenia  to  renounce 
Christianity  and  pay  fealty  to  Ormuzd,  and 
the  principle  of  Fire.  She  flooded  the  country 
with  her  armies,  and  Armenia,  though  lack- 
ing a  central  government  of  her  own,  took  up 
the  challenge.  She  organized  a  "popular 
movement,"  a  Holy  League  and  army  com- 
posed of  the  heads  of  the  ancient  houses 
and  the  bishops  of  the  Church  and  their 
followers  and  retainers,  and  sent  forth  this 
great  army  of  Christian  knights  to  meet  the 
hosts  of  Persia.  Already  she  was  practising 
democratic  action.  On  her  side  these  were 
peoples'  wars. 

On  her  spiritual  victory  over  her  first  great 
religious  foe  there  is  not  time  to  dwell. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  carnage  and  persecution 
only  served  to  stamp  the  Christian  ideal  more 


FROM   CONVERSION   TO   CRUSADES  29 

ineffaceably  upon  the  hearts  of  the  people, 
and  that  in  451  on  the  memorable  field  of 
Avarair,  Persia  finally  recognized  the  futility 
of  attempting  religious  coercion.  Meanwhile, 
Byzantium,  from  affiliation  with  whose  church 
Armenia  had  separated  at  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon,  had  begun  to  prey  more  oppres- 
sively upon  the  harassed  state  where  "two 
tides,  that  of  the  East  and  that  of  the  West, 
strove  for  mastery."  And  so  the  civilization 
which  the  Armenians  were  developing  re- 
ceived a  sudden  and  serious  check.  But 
racially  and  religiously  they  withstood  the 
onslaught,  and,  cheated  of  their  political 
destiny  at  home,  they  sought  in  the  service  of 
their  Byzantine  foe  and  rival  an  outlet  for 
y  their  creative  energies.  And  so  victorious 
were  they  that  according  to  Finlay,  Bryce, 
Schlumberger,  Rambaud,  Bussell,  Gelzer, 
and  others,  the  Eastern  Empire  was  for 
several  centuries  not  Greek  but  Armenian. 
It  was  the  Armenian  Emperor  Leo,  known 
as  the  Image  Breaker  because  of  his  icono- 
clasm,  who  commanded  Rome  to  destroy  her 
images.     He    had    been    converted    by    the 


30  THE   TRAGEDY   OP  ARMENIA 

Armenian  Paul,  to  whom  the  Protestant  sect 
of  the  Paulicians  owes  its  name. 

But  the  most  important  event  in  connection 
with  this  peaceful  conquest  of  Byzantium  was 
the  service  which  it  enabled  the  Armenians 
to  pay  to  Western  civilization.  They  filled 
the  civil  offices  and  officered  the  army,  and 
Leo  the  Iconoclast  was  still  emperor  when 
the  Saracens  hurled  against  Constantinople 
the  largest  Mohammedan  army  ever  assem- 
bled. "Of  its  180,000  men,  only  30,000 
got  back  home,  according  to  Mohammedan 
authorities,"  says  Finlay,  and  he  adds: 
"Twenty-two  years  later,  Leo  annihilated 
another  great  Moslem  army,  and  for  two 
centuries  the  Saracens  scarcely  troubled  the 
empire  again."  By  this  service,  as  momentous 
as  was  that  of  Charles  Martel  upon  the  field 
of  Tours,  the  Armenians  have  placed  the 
entire  world  in  their  debt. 

Meanwhile,  in  Armenia  proper,  we  see  the 
nation  again  rallying  incredibly  under  a  third 
dynasty  of  their  own  kings,  the  Pakradoonian, 
with  Ani,  the  city  of  a  thousand  churches,  as 
its  capital.  But  we  see,  too,  the  old  jealous 
Destiny  at  work.    The  Greeks,  who  had  again 


FROM  CONVERSION  TO  CRUSADES         81 

gained  the  ascendancy  in  Byzantium,  warred 
upon  this  kingdom  ceaselessly,  actuated  partly 
by  their  hostility  towards  the  independent 
Armenian  Church;  and,  finally,  leaguing 
themselves  with  the  Saracens,  they  compelled 
it  to  surrender  (1045). 

And  so  the  third  Armenian  dynasty  fell, 
after  an  existence  of  three  hundred  years; 
and  so  were  frustrated,  as  so  often  before, 
the  efforts  of  the  Armenian  race  to  realize 
in  freedom  its  own  genius.  Of  the  monu- 
ments which  remain  of  this  civilization,  Lynch 
says  that  "they  throw  strong  light  upon  the 
character  of  the  Armenian  people  and  bring 
into  pronouncement  important  features  of 
Armenian  history,"  that  "they  denote  a 
standard  of  culture  far  in  advance  of  the 
contemporary  standard  in  the  West,"  and 
that  "they  leave  no  doubt  that  this  people 
may  be  included  in  the  small  number  of  races 
susceptible  of  the  highest  culture." 

But  Byzantium  herself  was  to  rue  the  fatal 
downfall  of  the  Pagratids.  Just  as  she  was 
triumphing  over  their  humiliation,  there 
loomed  upon  the  horizon  great  hosts  of  tribes- 
men from  Mongolia  and  Tartary,  as  if  in 


82  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

prophecy  of  the  vengeance  which  should 
follow.  Alp  Arslan,  the  precursor  of  Genghis 
Khan,  Ertoghrul,  and  Othman,  suggested, 
could  she  but  have  read  the  lesson,  the  sub- 
sequent capture  of  Jier  own  capital  city  by 
Mohammed  II  and  her  own  overthrow.  In 
helping  to  destroy  the  Pakradoonian  king- 
dom, she  had  shattered  "the  advance  guard 
of  Christian  civilization  in  the  East,"  and 
had  opened  the  way  to  the  invading  foe. 

With  fate  so  much  against  them,  the 
Armenians  might  now  have  retired  from 
further  contest  and  still,  having  survived  the 
Assyrians,  the  Babylonians — and  the  Jews, 
upon  the  home  ground — be  reckoned  a  mar- 
velously  tenacious  race.  But  they  were  not 
to  retire.  The  old  obstinacy  of  purpose,  the 
old  deathless  courage  of  their  ancestors  still 
mastered  them,  and  inspired  certain  feudal 
princes  to  still  another  attempt  at  establishing 
an  Armenian  state.  One  of  these,  Rhupen 
of  the  Mountain,  a  cousin  to  the  Pakradoonian 
kings,  set  up,  on  the  heights  of  the  Tau- 
rus overlooking  the  Mediterranean,  another 
Armenian  kingdom,  known  both  as  the  King- 


FROM  CONVERSION  TO  CRUSADES        33 

dom  of  Lesser  Armenia  and  as  the  Kingdom 
of  Cilicia,  and  by  open  and  definite  alignment 
with  Europe,  proved  anew  the  singular  cos- 
mopolitan bias,  the  keen  political  vision  of 
the  racial  stock.  Attacked,  besieged  by  Arabs 
and  Tartars,  intrigued  against  and  even 
warred  upon  by  Byzantium,  the  Rhupenian 
dynasty  maintained  its  existence  for  three 
hundred  years,  and  shaped  for  itself  a  strik- 
ingly liberal  policy.  Armenians  were  sent 
to  colonize  in  Italy.  Italians  were  welcomed 
in  Cilicia.  Active  commercial  relations  were 
entered  upon  between  the  two  countries,  the 
governmental  administration  was  perfected, 
so  that  in  the  thirteenth  century  Marco  Polo, 
who  visited  it,  was  able  to  report  that  it  "was 
governed  with  much  justice  and  economy," 
and  that  "the  port,  Pay  as,  was  the  magazine 
of  all  the  precious  merchandise  and  of  all 
the  wealth  of  the  Orient."  And  when  the 
Rhupenian  line  failed  for  want  of  an  heir, 
the  nation,  for  political  purposes,  invited  a 
Latin  prince  of  the  French  family  of  Lusignan 
to  occupy  the  throne. 

The   Crusades   had   early   offered   to   this 
Kingdom    a    signal    opportunity    for    open 


34  THE   TRAGEDY    OF   ARMENIA 

advocacy  of  the  Christian  faith  which  it  was 
not  slow  to  accept.  Regardless  of  their 
material  safety,  conscious  only  of  the  fact 
that  spiritually  and  intellectually  their  destiny 
converged  with  that  of  Europe,  the  Armenians 
allied  themselves  to  the  Christian  forces 
throughout  the  entire  period  "by  lending  aid 
in  men,  in  horses,  in  arms,  in  food,  in  council' ' 
and  "by  acting  as  guides  in  the  desert."  The 
part  they  played  in  these  struggles  may  be 
gauged  by  the  recognition  offered  them  by  the 
popes  and  emperors  of  the  period.  On  the 
other  hand,  their  own  expectation  of  succor 
may  be  gathered  from  this  12th  century  poem 
by  the  Armenian  Nerses,  called  the  Gracious, 
one  of  the  nation's  greatest  poets  and  saints. 
The  translation  was  made  by  Miss  Zabelle 
Boyajian  of  London: 

THE  CRUSADERS 

Once  more  God  hither  moves  their  course; 

With  countless  infantry  and  horse, 

As  swell  the  waves  towards  the  strand, 

Fierce  and  tempestuous,  they  land. 

Like  sands  that  by  the  ocean  lie, 

Or  like  the  stars  that  strew  the  sky, 

They  fill  the  earth  where'er  they  go 


FROM   CONVERSION   TO   CRUSADES  35 

And  whiten  it  as  wool  or  snow. 

Their  voice  is  like  the  northern  wind, 

Driving  the  storm-cloud  from  behind. 

They  clear  the  land  from  end  to  end, 

The  unbelievers  forth  they  send, 

Redeeming  from  such  hopeless  plight 

All  Christians  held  within  their  might. 

Now  in  the  churches  cold  and  dark, 

Once  more  shall  burn  the  taper's  spark; 

And  you,  my  sons,  late  forced  to  flee 

To  distant  lands,  afar  from  me, 

Shall  now  return  in  chariots  fair 

Drawn  by  brave  steeds  with  trappings   rare. 

And  I  shall  lift  mine  eyes  above 

Beholding  near  me  those  I  love. 

My  arms  about  you  I  shall  fold, 

Rejoicing  with  a  joy  untold; 

And  my  black  robes   aside  will  lay 

To  dress  in  greens  and  crimsons  gay. 

But,  alas,  although  the  Armenians  put  their 
all  to  the  test,  they  were  to  see  the  hosts  of 
Islam  triumph.  Weaker  and  weaker  grew 
European  resistance  until  at  last,  abandoned 
by  the  West,  and  in  a  terrible  isolation, 
moral  and  military,  the  knights  of  Armenia 
stood  alone  upon  their  mountain  tops  and 
watched  the  crusading  hosts  recede  never  to 
return. 


36  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

The  kingdom  was  obliged  to  surrender  to 
the  Sultans  of  Egypt,  in  1375,  and  their  last 
king  was  made  captive.  After  his  ransom 
by  Spain,  in  vain  did  he  go  from  France  to 
England  and  from  England  to  France,  beg- 
ging these  countries  to  mend  their  quarrels, 
to  return  to  their  task  of  defending  Western 
civilization.  His  sagacious  council  was  un- 
heeded. The  barbaric  hordes  inundated 
Armenia — Major,  Minor,  and  Lesser — and 
drew  nearer  and  yet  more  near  to  Con- 
stantinople. 

An  interminable  succession  of  pictures 
throng  upon  the  vision  during  this  second 
grouping  of  the  tragedy.  The  pageantry  of 
the  classic  era  made  vivid  to  us  by  the  histo- 
rian Egishe — the  fortresses,  the  high  seats  of 
the  palaces,  the  bridal  chambers,  the  dining 
places  with  carven  platter  and  other  costly 
vessels  of  the  table,  the  ushers  by  the  door, 
the  cup-holders  at  the  festival,  the  flower 
gardens  and  vineyards,  the  hunting  excur- 
sions, the  councils  of  the  bishops  and  princes, 
the  heroism  of  the  battlefields — all  dissolve 
and  in  their  place  come  the  glories  of  the 


FROM   CONVERSION   TO    CRUSADES  37 

foreign  service  at  Byzantium,  the  triumph 
and  the  defeat  of  the  Kingdom  of  Ani  and 
the  brilliancy  and  eclipse  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Cilicia.  The  scenes  are  invested  with  all  the 
romance  and  glamour  of  the  medieval  period 
of  Europe.  Feudal  virtues  and  feudal  ex- 
cesses characterize  the  social  life.  Great 
houses  clash  with  one  another,  betray  one 
another,  display  vengeance  and  hostility  as 
well  as  splendid  generosity  and  superhuman 
courage.  The  mountain  heights  are  bristling 
with  battlements.  Armies  swarm  in  the  defiles 
and  on  the  plains.  The  whole  period  surges 
with  activity. 

And  yet,  amid  all  the  political  strife  and 
discord,  there  is  room  for  Art  to  make  its 
wonderful  way;  not  only  that  of  the  classic 
period  already  referred  to,  not  only  in  the 
architecture  of  the  Kingdom  of  Ani,  or  in  the 
beautiful  anthems,  liturgy  and  formal  litera- 
ture of  the  Church,  but  in  a  wonderful  lyric 
poetry  which  graced  especially  the  medieval 
period,  and  in  many  fascinating  forms  of 
purely  decorative  art.8  The  lyrical  poetry  of 
medieval  Armenia  has  been  declared  by 
Mr.  Valery  Brussov,  a  contemporary  Russian 


38  THE   TRAGEDY  OF  ARMENIA 

authority,  to  be  "among  the  treasures  of  the 
world,"  and  the  genius  of  her  decorative 
artists  is  evident  from  the  wonderful  carvings 
in  stone,  wood,  ivory,  and  metal  which  they 
have  left.  Old  tombstones,  croziers,  walls, 
cups,  exhibit  a  workmanship  the  spirit  and 
technique  of  which  has  been  the  inspiration 
of  similar  work  in  Europe.  To  Armenia,  too, 
the  origins  of  cloisonne  enamel  are  traced.  A 
type  of  picture  called  by  the  Armenians 
"thought-work,"  and  made  by  the  applica- 
tion of  bits  of  fabric  of  different  colors 
upon  a  plain  background,  is  said  to  have  so 
delighted  Botticelli  that  he  introduced  it  to 
Italy  and  made  use  of  the  idea  in  church 
decoration.  In  days  precarious  but  still  irra- 
diated by  the  "fighting  chance"  these  offerings 
to  beauty  formed  a  significant  part  of  the 
background  of  the  changing  scenes.  And  we 
infer  from  their  presence  human  happiness 
and  rapture,  gaiety  and  love. 

Among  the  myriads  of  characters  who  defile 
across  the  stage  we  dimly  discern  the  apostles, 
Thaddeus  and  Bartholomew,  and  the  Princess 
Santoukhd  and  other  martyrs  who  offered  up 
their  lives  in  the  first  faint  dawn  of  Chris- 


FROM  CONVERSION  TO  CRUSADES        39 

tianity.  We  see  Ripsime,  the  beautiful  Roman 
virgin,  and  her  companions,  who,  to  escape 
the  attentions  of  the  Emperor  Diocletian, 
"took  refuge  in  the  outskirts  of  the  Armenian 
capital,  Vagharshapat,"  only  to  enkindle  the 
desire  of  King  Tiridates,  from  whom  she 
also  fled,  to  be  later  captured  and  finally 
executed  for  her  noble  obstinacy;  we  see  the 
great  Illuminator,  Gregory,  we  see  warrior 
bishop,  Puritan  democrat,  feudal  lord,  scholar, 
artist,  merchant,  emperor,  soldier,  Red  Cross 
knight, — all  of  Armenian  race.  We  see,  in 
his  olive  wreath,  the  Armenian  Varastad, 
victor  of  the  last  Olympian  game;  Prceresius, 
the  rhetorician,  to  whom  Rome  erected  a 
statue  with  the  following  inscription,  Re  gin  a 
rerum  Roma  regi  eloquentiae;  and  generals 
and  statesmen  who  add  glory  to  Byzantium. 
Harun  al  Raschid,  Conrad  of  Wittlesbach, 
Raymond  of  Toulouse,  Godfrey  of  Bouillon, 
Bohemond,  Tancred,  Frederick  Barbarossa, 
Richard  the  Lion-Hearted,  Saladin,  give 
place  before  our  eyes  to  the  frightful  forms 
of  Alp  Arslan,  Genghis  Khan,  and  Tamer- 
lane. And,  throughout,  whether  against 
Persian  tyrant,  Saracen,  Mongol,  or  Turk, 


40  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

we  see  massed  the  solid  legions  of  the 
Armenian  people,  who  not  only  met  the 
enemy  valiantly  on  countless  battlefields,  but 
who,  as  martyrs  to  the  ideals  of  Christianity 
and  nationality,  laid  down  their  lives  heroi- 
cally, simply,  and  as  a  matter  of  course. 


Chapter  III 

UNDER     TURKISH     DOMINATION 

AND   THE   SPIRITUAL 

RENAISSANCE 

THE  "noble  singleness  of  feature"  which 
marked  the  moral  aspect  of  the  preced- 
ing stages  of  the  drama,  persists  with  a 
growing  majesty  and  poignancy  in  the  final 
stages.  The  loss  by  the  Armenians  of  eveiy 
vestige  of  political  and  military  power  raises 
the  plane  of  action  to  that  of  the  naked  spirit 
in  battle  with  brute  force,  ignorance,  mate- 
rialism, intrigue  and  treachery.  In  a  sense, 
it  becomes  an  issue  between  one  little  unarmed 
nation  and  the  world.  And  as  the  protago- 
nists other  than  Turkey  enter — Christian 
Europe,  and,  in  a  remote  and  non-official 
way,  Christian  America — the  concentration 
of  interest,  expectation,  suspense,  terror, 
loathing,  shame,  disappointment,  and  pity, 
mount  to  heights  of  intolerable  intensity. 
The  striking  elements  of  beauty  which  still 
remain  are  all  but  lost  in  a  chaos  of  the  revolt- 


42  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

ing  and  the  sordid,  the  disgraceful  and  heart- 
rending. 

The  pagan  period  of  the  drama  was  marked, 
it  is  true,  by  immense  political  and  military 
contests  and  upheavals  and  by  all  the  horrors 
of  foreign  invasions.  But  these  were  the  lot 
of  most  peoples  in  the  days  of  early  martial 
society.  And  while,  as  Lord  Byron  said,  "it 
would  be  difficult  to  find  the  annals  of  a 
nation  less  stained  with  crimes  than  those  of 
the  Armenians,"  still  they  gave  and  took 
with  the  rest  to  some  extent,  and  under 
Tigranes,  at  least,  became  a  really  imperial 
power.  And  the  very  fact  that  as  a  people 
they  survived  the  military  inundations  of  the 
great  Oriental  tyrannies  which  obliterated  so 
many  of  their  neighbors,  and  that  they  suc- 
ceeded in  maintaining  and  developing  a 
civilization  of  their  own,  tinges  the  ordeal 
with  all  the  luster  of  triumph. 

The  second  period,  too,  although  marked 
by  severe  and  continuous  religious  and 
political  persecution  and  the  destruction  of 
the  attainments  of  two  comparatively  long 
and  successful  dynasties,  is  still  flooded  with 
the  glory  of  action  and  conspicuous  achieve- 


UNDER   TURKISH   DOMINATION  43 

merit.  In  the  Aryan  Persians,  as  in  the 
Romans  and  Byzantines,  the  Armenians 
could  recognize  ethnic  similarity,  and  extract 
from  these  conquerors  a  kind  of  moral  tribute 
in  the  way  of  a  quasi  autonomy.  The  Sara- 
cens— Arab  or  Egyptian — were  likewise  of  a 
highly  evolved  racial  type.  And  there  was  a 
possibility  even  here  for  reciprocal  adjust- 
ments. 

But  the  race  to  which  they  now  fell  victim 
were  marauding  nomads  from  Central  Asia, 
possessing  no  culture  of  their  own,  and  of 
an  inferior  mentality.  Whatever  religion 
they  may  once  have  followed  they  speedily 
discarded  in  favor  of  a  corrupted  form  of 
Islam,  in  the  sword-worshiping,  world-con- 
quering aspects  of  which  they  saw  reflected 
their  own  basic  instincts.  The  six  centuries 
which  have  elapsed  since  their  coming  and 
the  power  which  they  have  enjoyed,  have 
only  served  to  prove  their  brutality  and 
their  worthlessness  as  factors  in  civilization. 
Plunder,  murder  and  rape  were  and  still  are 
their  main  incentives  to  action,  and  their 
iniquities  and  incompetence  have  been  pro- 


44  THE   TRAGEDY   OP  ARMENIA 

vocative  of  endless  wars,  of  which  the  present 
holocaust  is  but  the  logical  culmination. 

During  the  first  three  or  more  hundred 
years  of  this  domination,  the  Armenians  as 
a  people  were  practically  blotted  out  from 
the  annals  of  history.  Europe,  unable  or 
unwilling  to  contest  the  supremacy  of  the  foe 
in  Asia,  had  turned  from  the  blighted  East 
to  the  wonders  of  her  own  renaissance,  and, 
except  for  her  terrific  struggles  with  the  Turk 
as  he  encroached  more  and  more  upon  the 
heart  of  her  own  territory,  lent  no  direct 
assistance  to  the  beleagured  frontier.  In  vain 
did  the  popes  preach  new  crusades.  Byzan- 
tium was  allowed  to  fall  almost  unaided. 
Eastern  Christendom,  as  such,  was  forgotten. 

The  last  Armenian  dynasty  had  surrendered 
to  the  Sultans  of  Egypt  just  seventy-eight 
years  before  the  capture  of  Constantinople. 
If  the  greater  power  had  been  unable  to 
withstand  the  assaults  of  the  foe,  if  massacre 
was  the  lot  of  masses  of  the  Greeks  and 
servitude  the  destiny  of  the  survivors,  how 
must  it  have  fared  with  this  people  who 
lacked  any  semblance  of  political  cohesion, 
in  the  days  when  Mohammed  II  was  turning 


UNDER   TURKISH   DOMINATION  45 

churches  into  mosques,  and  threatening  to 
feed  oats  to  his  horse  from  the  high  altar  of 
St.  Peter's? 

Except  for  the  inhabitants  of  certain  moun- 
tain regions  difficult  of  access — two  of  which, 
Zeitoun  and  Sassoun,  retained  a  rough  inde- 
pendence until  the  present  war — the  Arme- 
nians were  subjected  everywhere  to  the  rav- 
ages of  fire,  sword,  pillage,  and  enslavement. 
Then,  as  now,  love  of  plunder  rather  than 
love  of  Islam  was  the  motive  which  led  the 
soldiers  to  these  extreme  excesses.  Four- 
fifths  of  all  the  loot  accrued  to  them;  the 
remaining  fifth  went  to  the  Emperor.  Conse- 
quently all  the  inhabitants,  high  and  low,  were 
stripped  of  their  possessions.  Resistance  was 
impossible. 

But  even  while  the  people  of  the  homeland 
were  being  massacred  and  enslaved,  the 
Armenians  of  the  Dispersion,  it  is  well  to 
remember,  were  continuing  to  play  their  im- 
memorial part  in  the  war  between  Liberty 
and  Tyranny,  Civilization  and  Barbarism. 
"In  1410,"  writes  Tchobanian,  "all  the  Arme- 
nian nobility  [of  Poland  whither  they  had 
emigrated  in  the  11th  century]  fought  with 


46  THE  TRAGEDY  OF  ARMENIA 

the  armies  of  Ladislas  Jagello,  and  in  the 
battle  of  Grundwaldt  contributed  to  the  vic- 
tory. [The  war  between  Poland  and  Prussia] . 
In  1683,  in  the  great  war  of  the  Austrians 
against  the  Turks,  five  thousand  Armenian 
soldiers  fought  valiantly  with  King  Sobieski 
at  the  gates  of  Vienna." 

Meanwhile,  in  Turkey,  amid  the  appalling 
domestic  decadence,  moral  and  material,  which 
attended  the  barbaric  reigns  of  the  successive 
Sultans;  under  the  terrific  strain  of  constant 
and  burdensome  wars  undertaken  by  the 
usurpers  against  Europe,  Persia,  and  Egypt; 
scattered  unarmed  among  a  foe  whose  author- 
ity was  swiftly  and  summarily  enforced  by 
the  scimitar,  by  poison,  by  the  rope,  by 
strangulation,  by  imprisonment;  a  foe  which 
took  the  savage's  delight  in  devising  new 
methods  of  torture,  and  which  claimed  re- 
ligious sanction  for  all  abominations  inflicted 
upon  the  Giaours  (infidels) ;  amid  this  in- 
credible orgy  of  license  and  cruelty,  which, 
in  the  earlier  days,  had  struck  terror  into 
the  hearts  of  free  and  powerful  peoples,  the 
Armenians,   with   a  tenacity   as   amazing   as 


UNDER  TURKISH   DOMINATION  47 

characteristic,  gradually  resumed  in  impres- 
sive, though  in  far  humbler  form,  something 
of  the  old  r6le  of  intellectual  and  practical 
leadership  which  at  other  times  in  their  his- 
tory had  resulted  in  the  conquest  of  their 
conquerors. 

Banned  from  the  army,  their  word  refused 
in  courts  of  law,  the  women  subject  to  seizure, 
their  property  to  confiscation  upon  no  provo- 
cation, taxed  to  the  utmost,  they  nevertheless 
succeeded  in  maintaining  some  kind  of  civil 
and  social  fabric  for  the  wastrels  who  had 
overpowered  them.  They  were  the  bankers, 
artists,  traders,  artisans,  and  farmers;  but 
even  as  they  conducted  the  commerce,  plied 
the  trades,  tilled  the  fields,  built  the  marble 
palaces,  filled  those  administrative  posts 
which  demanded  constructive  ability,  went 
as  ambassadors  to  foreign  countries,  and  in 
all  ways  augmented  the  resources  of  the  State, 
they  were,  as  a  people,  despised  and  outlawed 
by  their  idle  and  arrogant  masters  who  looked 
upon  them  as  "rayahs"  fit  only  to  be  ex- 
ploited; and  in  secret  and  in  silence  the  noble 
traditions  of  their  own  race  and  religion  took 
deep  and  deeper  root. 


48  THE    TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

During  these  centuries  of  enslavement,  the 
Armenian  race  lost  much  by  migrations, 
forced  and  voluntary.  Europe,  India,  and 
Persia  claimed  the  ambitions  of  many  of  the 
ablest.  Evidence  of  the  early  Armenian 
dispersion  in  Europe  is  to  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  books  in  Armenian  characters 
were  printed  as  early  as  1488  at  Venice  and 
Amsterdam,  and  at  Lembourg,  Milan,  Paris, 
Marseilles,  Leipzig,  and  Padua,  during  the 
years  of  the  two  succeeding  centuries.  They 
are  said  to  have  founded  the  city  of  Calcutta. 
Certain  it  is  that  they  rose  to  wealth  and 
influence  in  the  life  of  British  East  India  in 
general,  and  that  they  enjoyed  privileges 
there  usually  reserved  for  Englishmen  alone. 
We  hear  of  them  as  "prime  ministers"  to  the 
native  princes;  and  as  confidential  servants 
to  the  British  crown. 

The  songs  of  homesickness,  or  of  longing 
for  the  emigrant,  which  appear  at  this  time, 
testify  to  the  sufferings  and  losses  inflicted 
by  these  migrations.  A  melancholy  settled 
upon  the  spirit  of  the  people.  It  is  felt  in 
their  music.  It  throbs  in  their  poetry.  "No 
Christian   dare   look   a   Turk   in   the   face," 


UNDER   TURKISH  DOMINATION  49 

commented  a  European  traveler  who  was  one 
of  the  first  to  cross  the  gulf  which  had  sep- 
arated the  country  from  the  West  since  the 
Turkish  occupation.  The  scimitar  and  the 
bludgeon  of  the  Turk  had  indeed  overawed 
the  defenceless  Christian  populations.  There 
was  no  contesting  the  might  of  his  brutal  force. 
But  the  Armenians  had  a  higher  daring. 
They  alone,  of  all  the  peoples  of  Asia  which 
had  fallen  beneath  his  yoke,  had  achieved  the 
miracle  of  retaining  the  four  great  essentials 
of  national  life — racial  purity,  racial  customs, 
religious  integrity,  and  language.  Even  the 
soul  of  the  once  formidable  Persia,  which 
had  been  Mohammedanized  by  the  Saracens, 
and  which  had  come  indirectly  under  Turkish 
influence,  had  lost  its  ancient  characteristics. 
While  the  Chaldeans,  the  Ghebers,  the 
Syrians,  and,  in  Egypt,  the  Copts,  had  lost 
language,  religion,  or  national  traditions, 
one  or  more,  the  Armenians,  on  the  contrary, 
not  only  jealously  retained  all  their  distin- 
guishing features,  but  were  to  emerge  at  the 
end  of  the  long  struggle  with  a  national  con- 
sciousness   distinctly    heightened.     This    fact 


50  THE   TRAGEDY  OF  ARMENIA 

more    than    any    other,    says    De    Morgan, 
"entitles  them  now  to  a  national  re-birth." 

The  best  that  can  be  said  of  this  period  of 
bondage  is  that  it  taught  the  people  endurance 
and  reliance  upon  one  another.  Persecution 
brought  the  cohesion  which  their  independent 
nature  and  the  mountainous  character  of 
their  country  had  tended  to  disrupt.  Because 
of  religious  exclusiveness  and  sane  habits  of 
life  they  had  suffered  no  racial  degeneracy. 
Together  with  their  intellectual  vigor  they 
had  managed  to  retain  their  primitive  physical 
strength.  It  was,  on  the  whole,  a  fine  race 
which  had  survived  the  conquest  and  captivity.4 
Men  and  women  there  were  of  many  types 
of  form  and  of  countenance;  numbers  tall 
and  well  knit,  with  faces  of  the  distinctively 
Armenian  cast: — lofty  and,  among  the  men, 
even  massive  foreheads,  high  noses,  straight 
or  aquiline,  dark  eyes,  and  hair  abundant 
and  black;  their  complexions  and  lips  vivid 
with  the  rich  color  lent  them  by  the  brilliant 
sun  and  pure  air  of  the  great  tableland  and 
of  the  mountainous  region  of  Cilicia;  their 
demeanor  grave  and  reposeful,  reminiscent  of 
the  dignity  of  their  neighbors  of  India.    Others 


UNDER  TURKISH   DOMINATION  51 

there  were  who  showed  traces  of  the  Semitic 
strain  which  had  mingled  with  the  race  during 
the  dim  days  of  the  Babylonian  captivity  and 
at  other  periods  of  their  history.  Less  repose 
but  more  vivacity  marked  their  features.  Not 
infrequently  there  appeared  another  type, 
more  blooming  but  more  delicate,  of  fairer 
and  rosier  skin,  and  more  languorous  air.  And 
again  it  was  not  uncommon  to  see  faces  of  a 
heavier  cast  which  suggested  descent  from 
the  tribes  of  the  Kingdom  of  Ararat,  the 
original  Uradhu,  which  Haig  had  overcome. 
A  similar  variety  one  observes  among  all  the 
European  races. 

These  men  and  women  had  given  to  each 
other  in  monogamous  marriage  all  those 
affections  and  loyalties  which  make  family 
life  devoted  and  high.  Husband  and  wife, 
parents  and  children,  sister  and  brother, 
stood  by  one  another  with  a  patriarchal  sim- 
plicity and  fervor.  The  children  of  the  house- 
holds were  lovingly  and  wisely  nurtured,  and 
the  old  people  honored.  In  their  own  homes 
and  in  their  own  churches  they  observed  un- 
noticed their  national  and  religious  festivals. 
And    in    their     own     schools,    which     they 


52  THE   TRAGEDY    OF    ARMENIA 

themselves  maintained,  the  more  favored 
of  the  people  received  the  education  which 
their  limited  opportunities  afforded.  The 
knowledge  of  their  past  glories  and  of  their 
ancient  and  medieval  literatures  were  veiled 
from  them,  partly  through  the  evolution  of 
their  language  from  the  classic  to  the  modern, 
partly  through  the  scarcity  of  books,  but 
more  largely  through  the  opposition  of  their 
masters  to  all  that  savored  of  enlightenment. 
The  weight  of  the  oppressor  was  so  great  and 
circumstances  so  hostile  as  almost  to  extin- 
guish the  aggressive  intellectualism  which  has 
always  been  their  dominant  trait.  Since  the 
downfall  of  their  last  dynasty  they  had 
suffered  all  the  crippling  disabilities  of  a 
proscribed  race.  The  production  of  a  new 
literature  was  all  but  impossible. 

But  while  body  and  soul  were  thus  in  bond- 
age, the  spirit  of  liberty  and  light  which  had 
guided  the  destiny  of  the  race  in  other  days 
was  not  without  its  testimony.  Toward  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century  two  great 
figures  appear,  one  an  incarnation  of  the 
political,  the  other  of  the  cultural,  genius  of 
the  Armenian  race.    It  is  evident  through  the 


UNDER   TURKISH    DOMINATION  53 

career  of  Israel  Ori  that  the  dream  of  an  inde- 
pendent Armenia  had  never  completely  faded, 
and  that  the  fierce  love  of  freedom  which  had 
characterized  the  feudal  nobility  had  not 
wholly  waned  in  their  descendants. 

Israel  Ori  was  of  Persian  and  not  of  Turk- 
ish Armenia,  but  his  heroic  scheme  of  political 
emancipation  was  intended  to  apply  to  all 
the  Armenians  who  had  come  under  the  power 
of  the  tyrannical  Mussulmans  of  the  East. 
He  was  one  of  a  group  of  Armenian  meliks 
(hereditary  princes)  of  the  province  of 
Karabagh,  a  mountainous  district  which, 
although  paying  tribute  to  Persia,  had  main- 
tained a  semi-autonomy.  These  men  "yearnecl 
to  enter  upon  a  new  era  of  freedom"  and 
dared  to  take  bold  steps  to  secure  that  end. 
After  repeated  efforts  at  self-liberation  the 
nobility  of  the  rebellious  principalities  decided 
to  send  Ori  as  their  representative  to  the 
courts  of  Europe  with  the  object  of  soliciting 
the  "aid  and  protection  of  the  Powers,"  in  the 
furtherance  of  the  revolt  at  home.  After 
twenty  long  years  of  unflagging  effort,  he 
finally  succeeded  in  obtaining  formal  promises 
of  help  from  the  Emperor  Leopold  and  Peter 


54  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

the  Great.  And  although  the  outbreak  of  the 
Russo- Swedish  war  prevented  the  consumma- 
tion of  the  project,  the  episode  is  none  the  less 
most  significant  in  the  life  of  the  nation.  It 
is  more  than  a  drama  within  a  drama.  It  is 
part  of  the  old  sequence,  and  a  prophecy  of 
what  was  yet  to  follow.  For  we  see  fore- 
shadowed in  the  patient  but  dauntless  char- 
acter of  the  chief  actor,  the  patriots  who  were 
to  plead  the  cause  of  their  race  so  bravely 
and  so  steadfastly  in  the  nineteenth  and 
twentieth  centuries. 

The  other  great  figure  of  this  era  of 
awakening  is  Mekhitar,  an  Armenian  monk — 
a  convert  to  Catholicity — who,  realizing  that 
he  could  accomplish  nothing  for  his  race 
should  he  remain  in  Turkey,  left  that  be- 
nighted country  for  Venice,  where,  under  the 
patronage  of  the  Pope,  he  founded  the  great 
Armenian  monastery  and  outpost  of  learning 
known  as  the  Convent  of  St.  Lazar.  Here  he 
and  the  brotherhood  of  Armenians  whom  he 
drew  about  him  began  their  great  work  of 
editing  and  publishing  the  ancient  works  of 
the  forefathers  which  they  had  brought  with 
them  in  their  ancient  manuscript  form.    Here 


UNDER   TURKISH   DOMINATION  55 

they  wrote  original  histories  and  other  books 
and  compiled  grammars  and  dictionaries. 
Here  they  translated  the  works  of  the 
writers  of  the  Western  world,  of  modern 
days  and  of  antiquity.  It  was  this  move- 
ment which  ushered  in  the  sublime  but  ill- 
fated  modern  renaissance.  Not  only  was 
knowledge  of  the  deeds  of  the  great  kings 
who  had  gained  for  them  nationality,  and  of 
the  great  saints  who  had  brought  them  Chris- 
tianity, made  common  property,  not  only 
were  the  splendid  traditions  of  Ararat,  Ani, 
and  Cilicia  revived;  the  mind  of  the  people 
was  brought  into  contact  with  the  mind  of 
Europe,  and  especially  with  that  of  France, 
so  that  by  the  middle  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century  all  the  best  modern  theories  and 
philosophies  had  their  ardent  votaries  among 
these  outcast  subjects  of  the  besotted  and 
reactionary  Ottoman  State.  Gradually  the 
race  very  generally  began  to  exhibit  tokens 
of  its  old  eager  creativeness. 

Other  causes  contributed  to  this  awakening 
of  the  national  spirit.  The  vivifying  in- 
fluence of  Europe  and  America  was  felt  in 
the  persons  of  the  statesmen,  travelers,  mer- 


56  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

chants  and  scholars,  and — above  all — mission- 
aries and  teachers  who  began  to  penetrate  the 
country.  Although  these  were  of  the  race  of 
the  Crusaders,  they  knew  nothing  of  these 
ancient  allies  of  their  forefathers,  and  were 
not  prepared  to  meet  a  race  so  congenial  of 
spirit,  so  dynamic  and  original  of  mind. 
"They  are  the  Dutch  of  the  East,"  wrote 
Dulaurier.  "They  are  like  the  Swiss,"  said 
Lamartine.  "We  have  found  the  Yankees  of 
the  East,"  exclaimed  the  American  mission- 
aries who  had  gone  to  the  country  for 
the  purpose  of  converting  the  Mohammedan 
Turk. 

Schools  began  to  multiply,  Armenian  as 
well  as  American  and  French.  The  rap- 
prochement  with  the  West  was  further 
accelerated  by  the  number  of  students,  who, 
in  the  universities  of  Europe  and  America,  at 
the  Venetian  monastery  of  St.  Lazar,  and  at 
the  sister  house  which  had  been  established 
at  Vienna,  felt  the  divine  flame  of  the  rising 
civilization  which  their  own  ancestors  had 
done  so  much  to  kindle  and  to  foster.  Not  in 
the  degraded  concepts  of  Turkey,  but  in  the 
visions  of  the  aspiring  West,  did  the  Armenian 


UNDER   TURKISH   DOMINATION  57 

spirit  find  fellowship  and  affirmation.  It  was 
evident  that  such  a  people  could  not  longer 
endure  the  blighting  limitations  and  exactions 
of  the  Turkish  yoke. 


Chapter  IV 

THE  RISE 

AND  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  NEAR 

EASTERN  QUESTION 

THE  modern  Near  Eastern  Question  was 
a  weighty  factor  in  the  efflorescence  of 
light  and  hope  which  revealed  to  the 
Armenians  of  the  later  nineteenth  century  all 
the  degradation  and  horror  of  the  Turkish 
domination,  just  as  it  was  the  chief  force  in 
the  determination  of  the  last,  most  terrible, 
and  most  piteous  phase  of  the  entire  Arme- 
nian tragedy.  In  so  far  as  it  was  concerned 
with  the  treatment  of  Christians  in  general, 
in  the  Near  East,  it  was  but  a  resumption  of 
the  ancient  discussion  begun  by  Charlemagne 
and  Harun  al  Raschid.  This  has  been  a 
courtly,  and,  on  the  whole,  a  satisfactory 
correspondence,  as  were  afterwards  the  inter- 
changes between  the  Christian  knights  and 
the  mighty  Saladin.  But  the  Turks  were  of 
another  order,  and  the  motives  of  the  Western 
intercessors,  too,  had  very  radically  changed. 
The   espousal  of   the   Christian   cause   by 


THE   NEAR   EASTERN   QUESTION  DV 

Russia,  her  assumption  of  the  r6le  of  pro- 
tector of  the  Christians  of  the  East  officially 
conferred  upon  her  in  1774  by  the  Treaty  of 
Kainardje,  has,  in  spite  of  its  obvious  ulterior 
motive,  something  of  the  old  chivalrous  flavor 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  And  this  glamour  of  a 
semi-disinterested  championship  she  somehow 
consistently  managed  to  sustain  until  the 
coming  to  power  of  the  reactionary  Alex- 
ander III.  In  the  face  of  her  actual  accom- 
plishment and  the  fact  that  the  wars  she 
waged  time  after  time  on  behalf  of  the  Balkan 
Christians  brought  her  no  substantial  increase 
in  territory,  we  can  hardly  say  that  her 
motives  were  unmitigatedly  sordid.  We  must 
make  some  possible  allowance  for  Russian 
mysticism  and  ideality,  and  admit  the  possi- 
bility of  a  rude  Christian  esprit  de  corps  in 
this  uncouth  nation,  so  late  in  coming  under 
the  "rationalizing"  influence  of  the  West. 
Or,  even  if  we  must  suspect  that  her  motives 
were  always  wholly  selfish,  we  are  obliged  to 
admit  that  they  none  the  less  served  most 
excellent  ends. 

However  this  may  be,  the  revival  of  interest 
in  the  forgotten  East  on  the  part  of  the  other 


60  THE    TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

European  powers  was  nothing  if  not  frankly 
utilitarian.  It  is  certain  that  they  did  not 
even  play  at  dragon-killing.  From  the  first, 
they  recognized  the  iniquities  of  Turkish  rule, 
especially  as  it  affected  the  subject  Christians, 
but  they  took  no  more  than  an  academic 
interest  in  the  matter.  They  had  outgrown 
mysticism  and  sentimentality,  and  had  be- 
come out  and  out  opportunists,  at  least  so 
far  as  foreign  policies  were  concerned.  With 
economic  and  territorial  expansion  as  the 
guiding  governmental  motives,  it  was  natural 
that  the  point  of  view  of  the  Crusader  should 
give  way  to  that  of  the  adept  in  diplomacy, 
the  broker,  the  militarist.  Especially  after 
the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century 
did  the  relation  between  the  West  and  the 
Turkish  empire  take  on  the  definite  char- 
acter of  a  politico-economic  gamble.  Neither 
the  religion  nor  the  national  aspirations  of  the 
Christian  races  were  of  any  moment  in  the 
eyes  of  the  great  imperialisms,  whatever  these 
might  mean  to  the  more  idealistic  men  and 
women  of  the  respective  home  populations. 

A  corresponding  change  of  outlook  had  not 
occurred   among  the   Christians   of   Turkey. 


THE    NEAR    EASTERN    QUESTION  61 

There  the  issues  of  Christianity  and  of 
Nationality  were  still  keen  and  vital,  and  the 
love  and  longing  for  freedom  in  these  impor- 
tant respects  were  still  intense  because  of 
centuries  of  denial  on  the  one  hand,  and  of 
valiant  affirmation  on  the  other.  Besides,  the 
Christians  of  the  East,  even  the  Armenians, 
although  in  the  earlier  days  of  their  history 
as  noted  for  their  commercial  genius  as  were 
the  Phoenicians,  and,  in  their  later  days,  as 
are  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  Jews,  were 
practically  untouched  by  that  scientifically 
relentless  commercial  spirit  of  the  Mechanical 
Age  which  had  transformed  Europe.  Even 
the  shrewdest  bankers  and  business  men  were 
unsophisticated  and  primitive  in  their  outlook 
when  compared  with  this  new  type  of  financier 
and  statesman  which  was  evolving  in  the  West 
and  which  reckoned  personal  and  national 
profits  in  terms  of  politico-economic  exploita- 
tion. Their  dreams  of  liberation  were  founded 
upon  quite  another  and  simpler  scheme  of 
life. 

Moreover,  the  masses  of  the  Armenian 
people  were  farmers  and  tradesmen, — prac- 
tical, frugal,  shrewd,  but,  strange  as  it  may 


62  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

seem,  simple,  and,  in  spite  of  a  subtle 
native  discernment,  confiding.  They  idealized 
Europe.  They  respected  her  as  a  co-religion- 
ist, and  admired  her  as  the  exemplar  of 
Progress  and  establisher  of  Law.  In  spite  of 
themselves,  they  could  not  help  looking  to  her 
for  ultimate  redemption.  The  fact  that  the 
prophets  and  peoples  of  Europe  and  the 
narrow  governing  circles  were  two  distinct 
propositions,  neither  the  Christians  of  Turkey- 
in-Asia  nor  those  of  the  Balkans  seem  ever 
fully  to  have  grasped.  In  the  Armenian 
struggle,  this  vain  but  persistent  hope  of  a 
chivalrous  European  intervention  adds  the 
crowning  torture  to  the  culminating  disasters 
which  were  to  overtake  them  with  almost 
annihilating  force. 

So  much  for  the  new  factors  which  entered 
to  complicate  an  already  involved  and  des- 
perate situation.  On  its  political  side,  the 
contest  resolved  itself  into  a  question  either 
of  the  control  or  dismemberment  of  Turkey 
by  one  or  more  of  the  European  powers  or 
her  own  self-redemption.  Her  own  corrup- 
tion and  incompetence,  largely,  had  fashioned 


THE   NEAR   EASTERN   QUESTION  63 

the  impasse.  ^Naturally,  as  an  integral  part 
of  Turkey-in-Asia,  the  Armenians  were  chiefly 
concerned  with  internal  reform.  Unlike  the 
Balkan  nationalities,  with  them,  as  Viscount 
Bryce  remarks,  "The  alternative  to  an  Otto- 
man State  was  not  an  Armenian  State,  but  a 
partition  among  the  Powers,  which  would 
have  ended  the  ambitions  of  Turk  and  Arme- 
nian alike.  The  Powers  concerned  were  quite 
ready  for  a  partition,  if  only  they  could  agree 
upon  a  division  of  the  spoils.  This  common 
inheritance  of  the  Armenians  and  the  Turks 
was  potentially  one  of  the  richest  countries 
in  the  Old  World,  and  one  of  the  few  that 
had  not  yet  been  economically  developed. 
The  problem  for  the  Armenians  was  not  how  \ 
to  overthrow  the  Ottoman  Empire  but  how  to 
preserve  it,  and  their  interest  in  its  preserva- 
tion was  even  greater  than  that  of  their 
Turkish  neighbors  and  co-heirs.  .  .  .  Talent 
and  temperament  had  brought  most  of  the 
industry,  commerce,  finance  and  skilled  in- 
tellectual work  of  Turkey  into  the  Armenians' 
hands.  And  if  the  Empire  were  preserved  by 
timely  reforms  from  within,  the  position  of 
the    Armenians    would    become    still    more 


64  THE    TRAGEDY    OF   ARMENIA 

favorable,  for  they  were  the  only  native 
element  capable  of  raising  the  Empire 
economically,  intellectually  and  morally  to 
a  European  standard,  by  which  alone  its 
existence  could  permanently  be  secured.' ' 

Consequently,  the  Armenians  were  bent 
upon  securing  such  reform.  The  constitution 
drawn  up  in  '76  by  the  Armenian  statesman, 
Krikor  Odian,  Secretary  to  the  Turkish 
reformer,  Midhat  Pasha,  which  was  pro- 
claimed and  then  immediately  revoked  by 
Sultan  Abdul  Hamid,  would  have  served 
this  end.  But  the  Government,  blind  to  its 
own  interest,  and  radically  unable  to  see  the 
legitimacy  of  reform  demands — especially  as 
they  affected  Christians — persisted  in  its 
suicidal  policy  of  oppression.  After  every 
such  demand  it  became  more  cruel  and  re- 
actionary than  ever. 

However,  there  is  a  certain  inexorable  law, 
made  axiomatic  by  the  great  Irish  liberator, 
O'Connell,  which  we  must  not  lose  sight  of. 
When  all  is  said,  we  know  that  in  exigencies 
of  this  sort  "he  who  would  be  free,  himself 
must  first  strike  the  blow."  And  we  are 
likely  to  inquire  if,  other  than  by  an  occa- 


THE    NEAR   EASTERN   QUESTION  65 

sional  humble  protest  or  petition,  the  Arme- 
nians of  these  modern  days  in  any  way  proved 
themselves  worthy  to  be  ranked  with  the 
other  heroic  peoples — the  Greeks,  the  Serbs, 
the  Rumanians,  the  Bulgarians — who  through 
storm  and  stress  had  been  partly  the  means 
of  effecting  their  own  liberation  from  the 
Turkish  yoke. 

Considering  that  from  the  beginning  of  the 
Turkish  domination  the  Armenians  had  never 
been  permitted  to  bear  or  to  possess  arms; 
considering  that  they  were  widely  scattered 
among  watchful  Turkish  and  Kurdish  popu- 
lations, it  is  by  no  means  a  fair  question. 
Still,  it  is  well  for  us  to  realize  that  in  spite 
of  these  formidable  handicaps — and  aside 
from  the  so-called  "revolutionary"  movement, 
undertaken  only  as  a  last  resort,  and  then 
with  the  desperate  understanding  that  only 
by  the  help  of  Europe  could  it  in  any  way 
avail — the  Armenian  race,  owing  to  the  genius 
and  courage  of  a  number  of  its  own  sons  in 
the  service  of  Russia,  did  actually  secure  a 
virtual  emancipation  from  the  most  intolerable 
of  their  wrongs,  but  that  the  fruits  of  this 
victory   were   deliberately   destroyed   by   the 


66  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

very  Powers  to  whom  they  had  most  right  to 
look  for  sympathy. 

It  was  the  Russo-Turkish  war  of  '76-'78 
which  brought  to  the  Armenians  this  oppor- 
tunity. At  the  beginning  of  the  century  a 
portion  of  Armenia  proper,  the  Caucasian 
district,  had  come  under  the  dominion  of  the 
Czar.  And  the  people  thus  freed  from 
Turkish  toils  sprang  to  a  height  of  material 
and  moral  prosperity  sufficient  to  prove  the 
artificial  nature  of  their  retardation  in  the 
interior  of  Asia  Minor.  Macler,  De  Morgan, 
Lynch,  Bryce,  all  testify  to  the  economic 
development  of  the  region  which  they  in- 
habited, once  they  had  obtained  even  a 
measure  of  freedom.  De  Morgan  states  that 
under  their  hands  the  province  became  within 
a  comparatively  few  years  one  of  the  most 
prosperous  in  all  Russia. 

But  more  significant  even  than  this  demon- 
stration of  economic  power  was  the  moral 
flowering  of  the  people.  Stimulated  by  their 
own  liberties,  by  study  in  the  Russian 
universities,  and  by  contact  with  Russian, 
German,  and  French  thought,  the  race  pro- 
duced   a    succession    of    patriots,    warriors, 


THE   NEAR   EASTERN   QUESTION  67 

thinkers,  dramatists,  novelists,  and  poets,  of 
whom  any  race  on  earth  might  be  proud. 
Europe,  and  especially  France,  is  coming  to 
know — largely  through  the  efforts  at  Paris 
of  Mr.  Archag  Tchobanian  and  Professor 
Frederic  Macler,  professor  of  Armenian  at 
UEcole  des  Langues  Orientales  Vivantes — 
something  of  the  genius  of  this  galaxy  of 
writers.  And  the  English-speaking  world, 
through  the  labors  of  Miss  Alice  Stone 
Blackwell,  Miss  Zabelle  Boyajian,  Mr.  Robert 
Arnot  and  others,  is  coming  to  know  some- 
thing of  the  poetry.  But,  as  a  potential 
factor  in  the  life  of  the  nation,  no  Armenian 
figure  of  the  Caucasus  can  claim  anything 
like  the  significance  which  invests  the  person 
of  Loris  Melikoff,  confidante  and  advisor  to 
Alexander  II,  who,  with  other  Armenian 
generals,  constituted  the  High  Command  of 
the  Russian  army  on  the  Caucasian  front  in 
that  momentous  war. 

The  Turks  were  superior  in  numbers  to 
the  Russians,  but,  under  the  inspired  direc- 
tion of  those  men  wrho  felt  that  they  were 
defending  the  old  home  ground,  they  were  so 
decisively  repulsed  as   to  be  constrained  to 


68  THE    TRAGEDY    OF    ARMENIA 

comply  with  the  vigorous  but  not  ungenerous 
terms  dictated  to  them  by  Russia  in  the  Treaty 
of  San  Stefano.  When  we  remember  that 
Melikoff  was  yet  to  draft  a  constitution  for 
Russia — which  Czar  Alexander  was  on  the 
eve  of  proclaiming  at  the  time  of  his  assassi- 
nation— that  he  was  statesman  as  well  as 
general,  and  that  he  was  the  greatest  figure 
of  the  victorious  war,  we  can  easily  recognize 
the  influence  of  his  hand  in  the  sixteenth 
article  of  the  Treaty  of  San  Stefano  which, 
under  strong  military  guarantee,  assured 
redemption  to  the  Armenians  of  the  scandal- 
ously misgoverned  interior  provinces. 
The  Article  follows: 

"As  the  evacuation  by  the  Russian  troops  of  the 
territory  which  they  occupy  in  Armenia,  and  which  is 
to  be  restored  to  Turkey,  might  give  rise  to  conflicts  and 
complications  detrimental  to  the  maintenance  of  good 
relations  between  the  two  countries,  the  Sublime  Porte 
engages  to  carry  into  effect,  without  further  delay,  the 
improvements  and  reforms  demanded  by  local  require- 
ment in  the  provinces  inhabited  by  the  Armenians,  and 
to  guarantee  their  security  from  Kurds  and  Circassians." 

This,  of  course,  meant  that  not  until 
the  reforms  had  been  consummated  would  the 


THE    NEAR    EASTERN    QUESTION  69 

Russian  troops  be  withdrawn.  It  was  the 
first  serious  attempt  that  had  been  made 
by  any  European  power  on  behalf  of  the 
Armenians,  although  such  reform  had  been 
stipulated  under  the  general  heading  "Chris- 
tian" in  the  Treaty  of  Paris,  and  had  at  times 
since  been  the  subject  of  international  dis- 
cussion. That  the  conditions  demanded  such 
drastic  intervention  is  more  than  apparent 
from  such  testimony  as  that  of  C.  B.  Norman, 
then  war-correspondent  for  the  London 
Times,  and  numerous  other  foreign  eye- 
witnesses: 

"In  my  correspondence  to  the  Times" 
Mr.  Norman  writes,  "I  made  it  a  rule  to 
report  nothing  but  what  came  under  my  own 
personal  observation,  or  facts  confirmed  by 
European  evidence. 

"A  complete  list  it  is  impossible  for  me  to 
obtain,  but  from  all  sides  ...  I  hear  piteous 
tales  of  the  desolation  that  reigns  throughout 
— villages  deserted,  towns  abandoned,  trade 
at  a  standstill,  harvest  ready  for  the  sickle, 
but  none  to  gather  it  in,  husbands  mourning 
their  dishonored  wives,  parents  their  mur- 
dered children,  churches  despoiled  and  dese- 


70  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

crated,  graves  dug  up,  young  of  both  sexes 
carried  off,  and  the  inhabitants  of  villages 
driven  naked  into  the  fields,  to  gaze  with 
horror  on  their  burning  homesteads.'  ■ 

There  was  but  a  brief  moment,  however, 
in  which  to  rejoice  and  thank  God  for  this 
long-sought  deliverance  promised  by  the 
Treaty  of  San  Stefano.  Hardly  was  their 
protection  assured  when  England,  already 
long  committed  to  the  so-called  "integrity  of 
Turkey"  policy  in  the  interests  of  her  own 
Eastern  possessions,  promptly  interfered  and 
demanded  that  the  treaty  drawn  up  by  Russia 
be  revised  at  an  International  Convention. 
Already,  she  had  sent  her  fleet  through 
the  Dardanelles  in  threat  of  war  should  Russia 
insist  upon  following  up  her  successes. 
Russia  was  in  no  position  to  take  up  the 
challenge,  so  she  submitted  to  England's 
dictation.  The  Treaty  of  San  Stefano  was 
annulled  and  that  of  Berlin  substituted.  The 
fruits  of  the  well-earned  victory  of  the  Rus- 
sians were  effectively  minimized.  Incident- 
ally, Melikoff's  signal  triumph  on  behalf  of 
his  people  was  turned  to  black  defeat.  More 
vulnerable  than  ever  they  had  been  in  all 


THE   NEAR   EASTERN   QUESTION  71 

their  history,  the  all  but  liberated  Arme- 
nians were  handed  back  to  their  infuriated 
tormentors. 

Still  there  remained  a  hope.  By  the  61st 
article  of  the  Treaty  of  Berlin — secured  chiefly 
through  the  efforts  of  an  Armenian  delega- 
tion headed  by  the  ex-Patriarch  Khrimian — 
the  Six  Great  Powers,  England,  Germany, 
Austria,  France,  Italy,  and  Russia,  had 
agreed  to  become  the  protector  of  the  Arme- 
nians, although  without  any  definite  military 
guarantee. 

The  Article  read: 

"The  Sublime  Porte  undertakes  to  carry  out,  without 
further  delay,  the  improvements  and  reforms  demanded 
by  local  requirements  in  the  provinces  inhabited  by  the 
Armenians,  and  to  guarantee  their  security  against  the 
Circassians  and  Kurds.  It  will  periodically  make  known 
the  steps  it  has  taken  to  this  effect  to  the  Powers,  who 
will  superintend  their  application." 

Almost  simultaneously,  in  secret  conference 
with  the  Turkish  Government,  England  had 
negotiated  the  Cyprus  Convention,  a  treaty 
designed  to  secure  both  her  own  and  Turkish 
interests    against    the    further    advance    of 


72  THE   TRAGEDY    OF   ARMENIA 

Russia.  As  one  of  the  series  of  state  docu- 
ments which  bear  most  strongly  upon  the 
destiny  of  the  Armenians  it  deserves  to  be 
cited  here.    I  quote  the  main  article: 

"If  Batoum,  Ardahan,  Kars,  or  any  of  them  shall  be 
retained  by  Russia,  and  if  any  attempt  shall  be  made 
at  any  future  time  by  Russia  to  take  possession  of  any 
further  territories  of  His  Imperial  Majesty  the  Sultan 
in  Asia,  as  fixed  by  the  definitive  Treaty  of  Peace, 
England  engages  to  join  His  Imperial  Majesty  the 
Sultan  in  defending  them  by  force  of  arms. 

"In  return,  His  Imperial  Majesty  the  Sultan  prom- 
ises England  to  introduce  necessary  reforms,  to  be 
agreed  upon  later  by  the  two  Powers,  into  the  govern- 
ment and  for  the  protection  of  the  Christian  and  other 
subjects  of  the  Porte,  in  these  territories;  and  in  order 
to  enable  England  to  make  necessary  provision  for 
executing  her  engagement  His  Imperial  Majesty  the 
Sultan  further  consents  to  assign  the  Island  of  Cyprus 
to  be  occupied  and  administered  by  England." 

Thus  Russia  was  ousted  from  her  position 
as  special  protector  of  the  Christians  of  the 
East,  and  Europe  collectively  and  England 
particularly  assumed  responsibility  for  the 
execution  of  reforms  in  Armenia. 

Once  the  Russian  forces  were  withdrawn,  the 


THE   NEAR   EASTERN    QUESTION  73 

Sultan,  as  might  have  been  expected,  imme- 
diately began  to  inaugurate  a  policy  of  re- 1 
prisals  which  had  for  its  aim  nothing  less  than  J 
the  total  impoverishment  and  final  extermina- 
tion of  the  Armenian  population.  He  rightly 
discounted  the  sincerity  of  Europe  with 
regard  to  the  Armenians,  and  decided  to 
eliminate  this  element  whose  presence  and 
whose  status  necessitated  reform  and  might 
later  offer  further  pretext  for  foreign  inter- 
vention. The  first  and  most  conspicuous  step 
to  this  end  was  the  organization  into  regular 
cavalry  of  the  marauding  Kurdish  tribes, 
from  whose  depredations  the  Armenians  had 
especially  been  promised  protection.  These 
were  given  power  over  their  lives,  honor  and 
property.  Then,  taxes  already  unbearable 
were  increased  and  ingeniously  multiplied; 
travel,  even  from  town  to  town  for  business 
purposes,  was  virtually  prohibited;  the  collec- 
tion of  debts  from  the  non- Christian  popula- 
tion was  made  impossible;  imprisonment 
without  trial  and  the  open  or  secret  murder 
of  the  leading  men  became  common  practices ; 
the  abduction  and  violation  of  women  were 
encouraged  and  connived  at  by  the  officials. 


74  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

Mrs.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop,  the  famous 
traveler,  who  visited  Armenia  in  1890,  gives 
this  report  of  the  conditions  prevailing  at  that 
time : 

"On  the  whole,"  she  says,  "the  same  condi- 
tion of  alarm  prevails  among  the  Armenians 
as  I  witnessed  previously  among  the  Syrian 
(often  called  Nestorian)  Rayahs.  It  is  more 
than  alarm,  it  is  abject  terror,  and  not  with- 
out good  reason.  In  plain  English,  general 
lawlessness  prevails  over  much  of  this  region. 
Caravans  are  stopped  and  robbed,  travelling 
is,  for  Armenians,  absolutely  unsafe,  sheep 
and  cattle  are  being  driven  off,  and  outrages, 
which  it  would  be  inexpedient  to  narrate,  are 
being  perpetrated.  Nearly  all  the  villages 
have  been  reduced  to  extreme  poverty,  while 
at  the  same  time  they  are  squeezed  for  the 
taxes  which  the  Kurds  have  left  them  with- 
out the  means  of  paying." 

In  vain  in  the  midst  of  this  reign  of  terror 
did  the  representatives  of  the  people  appeal 
over  and  over  again  to  the  Government  for 
relief  and  redress.  Finally,  when  it  became 
only  too  evident  that  they  were  the  victims 
of  a  vindictive  design,   they  turned  to  the 


THE   NEAR   EASTERN   QUESTION  75 

Signatory  Powers  on  the  basis  of  their  Berlin 
Treaty  rights.  That  they  were  justified  in 
doing  this  is  evident  from  the  official  testi- 
mony of  the  foreign  consuls  and  ambassadors 
in  innumerable  Blue  and  Yellow  books,  from 
the  protesting  speeches  delivered  in  the  Euro- 
pean, and  especially  in  the  English  and 
French  parliaments,  and  from  the  representa- 
tions which  the  Powers  made  to  the  Porte. 

But,  as  we  know,  the  Sultan,  an  adept  in 
intrigue,  took  advantage  of  the  jealousies  of 
the  Powers  and  played  one  off  against  the 
other  while  he  continued  his  murderous  policy 
with  regard  to  the  Armenians.  There  re- 
mained to  the  latter  but  one  desperate  chance. 
Some  of  the  young  men  of  the  nation — many 
of  whom  had  received  their  ideals  from  the 
prophets  of  Europe  and  America — organized 
themselves  into  patriotic  societies  for  the  sole 
purpose  of  self-defence.  They  managed  to 
get  possession  of  arms  and  were  able  success- 
fully here  and  there  to  resist  the  outrages  and 
depredations.  Only  thus,  they  had  been  told, 
might  they  win  the  respect  and  attention  of 
Europe  and  secure  her  intervention. 


76  THE    TKAGEDY    OF    ARMENIA 

We  know  what  followed.  The  great 
massacres  of  '95  and  '96  are  still  fresh  in  our 
minds.  The  tears  for  those  unpunished  crimes 
are  yet  upon  the  cheek,  the  shame  is  yet  upon 
the  brow,  the  agony  is  yet  keen  in  the  hearts 
of  the  great  army  of  men  and  women  of  all 
races  and  nations  who  longed  to  arrest  the 
murderous  debauch  but  lacked  the  power  to 
do  so.  The  hills  and  valleys  of  the  great 
tableland,  the  cities  of  the  plains  and  of  the 
sea  coasts,  even  the  capital  city  itself,  dotted 
with  foreign  embassies,  became  the  scene  of 
a  colossal  butchery.  In  regions  made  sacred 
by  the  heroic  defence  of  the  Christian  faith  by 
this  nation,  its  earliest  adherent,  the  savage 
Turk  was  allowed  to  work  his  abhorrent  will 
unchecked.  The  weaponless  populations  were 
visited  with  horrors  which  mankind  had 
thought  outgrown. 

But  while  the  funeral  pyre  of  a  nation  was 
being  kindled;  while  a  humanity  which  had 
flowered  nobly  in  spite  of  insuperable  diffi- 
culties was  being  thrown  as  dross  into  the 
flames  by  barbaric  and  sacrilegious  hands; 
while  white-haired  men  and  women  and  those 
filled  with  all  the  energy  of  their  best  years, 


THE    NEAR   EASTERN    QUESTION  77 

— fathers,  mothers,  brides,  youths,  maidens, 
and  the  angelic  forms  of  little  children  who 
had  but  opened  their  trusting  eyes  upon  this 
world, — were  being  sent  to  swell  the  hosts  of 
martyrs  to  Christianity  and  to  Freedom,  the 
old  frenzied  cry  of  "Christ  or  Mohammed" 
ringing  in  their  ears;  upon  the  heights  of  old 
Zeitoun  and  amid  the  cliffs  of  Sassoun,  where 
the  race  had  preserved  a  scant  immunity 
from  Turkish  power,  there  thundered  forth 
the  defiant  voices  of  the  ancient  heroes  in  the 
shouts  of  the  brave  mountaineers,  who, 
scantily  armed,  held  the  foe  at  bay  for  months 
to  the  marvel  of  the  world. 

Zeitoun,  a  hill  town  of  the  old  Rhupenian 
dynasty,  refused  to  surrender  until  formal 
peace  terms  had  been  entered  upon  by  Turkey, 
at  the  instance  of  the  foreign  ambassadors. 
And  when  at  Sassoun  the  inevitable  happened 
and  the  Turks  came  rushing  up  the  heights, 
the  women  of  the  villages,  with  their  babies 
in  their  arms,  calling  upon  God  to  accept 
them  as  sacrifices,  hurled  themselves  from  the 
precipices  rather  than  fall  into  the  debasing 
hands  of  the  foe.  And,  on  the  plains,  the 
mother  river,  Euphrates,  received  other  hun- 


78  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

dreds  of  women  and  maidens  who,  guarding 
their  integrity  as  the  pearl  of  greatest  price, 
flung  their  bodies  to  her  rescuing  waves. 

It  is  no  longer  possible  to  summon  up  the 
individual  forms  which  crowd  the  stage.  The 
drama  has  burst  its  national  bounds  and  has 
become  world  wide,  even  cosmic  in  its  char- 
acter. We  see  two  worlds,  one  of  darkness 
and  one  of  light,  struggling  for  birth  in  the 
hearts  and  minds  of  men.  The  gigantic  evils 
embodied  in  a  succession  of  depraved  sultans 
and  temporizing  world  policies,  made  mani- 
fest by  this  great  crisis,  present  issues  and 
opportunities  which  call  for  potent  and  colossal 
heroes.  But  we  see  none.  The  aged  Glad- 
stone's Cassandra-like  warning,  "To  serve 
Armenia  is  to  serve  Civilization/'  evokes  no 
response,  except  among  those  who,  in  indi- 
vidual capacity — like  the  noble  American 
missionaries  and  other  humanitarians — take 
up  the  great  burden  of  terror  and  agony  as  if 
it  were  their  own,  and  harbor,  comfort  and 
watch  with  the  people,  or,  before  the  govern- 
ments and  peoples  of  the  world,  cry  out  the 
story  in  all  its  shame  and  pity.5  And  even 
them  we  cease  to  see. 


THE   NEAR   EASTERN   QUESTION  79 

In  this  moment  of  stupendous  cataclysm, 
when  the  fate  not  only  of  the  Armenian 
nation,  but  of  Civilization  itself  was  trembling 
in  the  balance,  while  yet  the  nations  had  the 
power  to  deal  the  death  blow  to  the  power  of 
Autocracy  which  was  yet  to  ravage  the  world, 
it  is  as  if  the  spirit  of  the  Armenian  nation, 
the  prescience  of  these  things  and  of  the  death 
of  all  her  children  upon  her,  took  tangible 
form.  We  seem  to  see  her  rise  with  all  her 
glorious  past  upon  her.  We  see  her  turn 
horrified,  dumbfounded  and  appealing  eyes 
upon  the  six  mighty  Powers  who  had  prom- 
ised to  aid  her.  She,  the  Apostle  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  its  servant  and  defender,  she,  who 
had  held  back  the  Saracens  in  the  days  of  her 
power,  and  had  given  of  the  might  of  her  sons 
to  the  cause  of  the  Crusades,  she,  a  mother 
of  Democracy,  we  see  standing  with  bare, 
bleeding,  outstretched  hands  in  supplication 
to  those  children  of  the  West, — the  Six  Great 
Knights,  armed  to  the  teeth,  whose  navies  ride 
at  will  the  oceans  of  the  world,  whose  armies 
patrol  the  earth.  We  see  her  standing  thus. 
But  their  great  forms  have  become  dwarfed, 
futile.    Their  eyes  are  averted ;  their  ears  deaf. 


80  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

And  then,  her  despairing  eyes  full  of  wild 
pleading,  we  see  Armenia  turn  to  America, 
to  that  fair  Galahad  among  nations  with  the 
glory  of  his  own  great  crusades  for  liberty 
still  lighting  his  frank  brow;  to  America,  so 
friendly,  so  hospitable,  so  practiced  in  brother- 
hood, so  determined  to  trample  the  evils  in- 
herited from  the  Old  World  and  to  develop 
and  add  to  all  the  good;  whose  spirit  had 
visited  her  land  and  had  created  oases  whither 
the  hunted  souls  and  bodies  of  her  children  had 
found  comfort  and  refuge.  Armenia  in  that 
awful  moment  looks  into  his  beautiful  face. 
She  sees  the  young  eyes  appalled  at  the  sight 
of  her  great  suffering;  she  sees  the  generous 
hands  extended  full  of  bounty ;  but  she  notices 
that  though  the  scars  of  battle  are  upon  his 
face,  though  the  passion  for  justice  is  in  his 
eyes, — the  consciousness  of  his  great  mission 
has  not  yet  fully  dawned, — the  knight  is  but 
an  adolescent  whose  moment  to  enter  the 
world's  lists  has  not  yet  arrived.6 


Chapter  V 
AFTER  THE  MASSACRES 

FROM  this  time  on  we  see  the  rapid  work- 
ings of  the  destiny  which  was  finally  to 
overtake  not  only  the  Armenians  but 
the  entire  world  as  the  result  of  the  corrupt 
barbarism  of  Turkey  and  of  iniquitous 
European  diplomacy  in  the  Near  East.  The 
appalling  catastrophe  which  had  fallen  un- 
redressed upon  the  little  Armenian  nation — 
such  is  the  contagion  of  unrebuked  evil — was 
but  the  foreshadowing  of  the  fate  which  was 
soon  to  overtake  the  Belgians,  the  Serbs,  the 
Poles,  and  which  was  to  exact  the  heavy 
blood  tribute  of  France,  of  the  British 
Empire,  of  Italy,  and  even  of  America,  and 
to  threaten  the  very  existence  of  these  free 
and  powerful  states. 

At  the  time  the  Western  governments  were 
thoroughly  aware  of  their  solemnly  under- 
taken treaty  obligations  with  regard  to  the 
Armenians,  but  to  the  worldly-wise  mate- 
rialists who  were  then  shaping  the  fortunes 


82  THE   TRAGEDY  OF  ARMENIA 

of  our  world  it  seemed  "safer"  to  ignore  than 
to  fulfil  them.  One  wonders  if  even  the 
present  cataclysm  has  convinced  statesmen 
of  this  type  that  there  are  certain  crimes 
against  humanity  which  mankind  may  not 
tolerate  and  that  the  violation  of  this  moral 
law  carries  with  it  its  own  inevitable  doom. 

For  the  massacres  of  the  Armenians  did 
more  than  cry  out  for  the  decent  type  of 
statesmanship  which  today  we  recognize  as 
imperative.  They  precipitated  a  stupendous 
crisis  with  regard  to  the  much  coveted  estate 
of  the  Sick  Man.  The  vain  cry  of  Christian 
to  Christian  had  revealed  to  the  Sultan  all 
too  apparently  the  sole  basis  of  European  in- 
terest in  the  Near  East.  From  henceforth  he 
at  least  had  nothing  to  fear  from  pseudo- 
Christian  intervention.  Hereafter,  it  was  to 
be  simply  a  pitched  battle  for  the  control  of 
what  Napoleon  called  the  "Empire  of  the 
World,"  the  region  "which  dominates  the 
three  continents  upon  which  live  ninety  per 
cent  of  all  mankind."  And  the  Sultan  was 
in  a  position  to  choose  his  partners.  The 
increasingly  conflicting  ambitions,  the  moral 
cowardice   and   the   venality   of  the   Powers 


AFTER   THE   MASSACRES  83 

and  his  own  corresponding  arrogance  made 
it  only  loo  evident  that  the  old  semi- 
respectable  pre-massacre  status  could  never 
be  restored,  and  that  the  diplomacy  shaped 
by  the  Great  Crime  might  be  hereafter  as 
conscienceless  as  he  and  his  chosen  partners 
willed.  j 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  at  this  very/ 
time  that  Germany,  capitalizing  every  ele- 
ment of  the  situation,  even  the  blood  of  the 
victims,  openly  declared  herself  the  friend 
and  protector  of  the  Sultan  and  of  the  whole 
Islamic  world,  and  began  to  lay  the  sure 
foundation  of  her  Drang  nach  Osten  scheme 
— her  push  toward  world  conquest.  Immu- 
nity from  European  intervention,  no  matter 
what  his  crimes,  and  eventually  a  great  pan- 
Islamic  empire  were  the  alluring  enticements 
which  she  offered  to  the  Monster  of  Con- 
stantinople in  return  for  the  concession  to 
build  the  longed-for  Bagdad  Railroad,  so 
well  named  the  "spine  of  the  present  war." 
And  with  such  designs  in  prospect,  the  blood, 
not  only  of  hundreds  of  thousands,  but  of 
millions  of  innocent  human  beings  might  well 
be  permitted  to  cry  in  vain. 


84  THE    TRAGEDY    OF    ARMENIA 

We  are  familiar  with  the  ghastly  farce 
enacted  by  the  Kaiser  at  Jerusalem, 
Damascus,  and  Constantinople.  We  see 
this  successor  to  Frederick  Barbarossa — that 
Crusader  who  sent  the  Crown  to  one  of  the 
princes  of  Lesser  Armenia — paying  equal 
homage  to  the  tombs  of  Jesus,  the  world's 
Great  Democrat  and  lover  of  his  kind,  whose 
"kingdom  was  not  of  this  world,"  and  to 
that  of  Saladin,  the  mighty  Mohammedan 
conqueror  and  chief.  We  hear  his  specious 
words  as  he  places  a  wreath  upon  the  tomb 
of  the  "august  Saracen  whose  sword  had 
driven  the  Crusaders  from  Jerusalem  forever." 

"I  seize  cheerfully  upon  this  opportunity 
to  express  my  gratitude  to  his  Imperial 
Majesty,  the  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid,  in  whose 
sincere  love  for  me  I  glory.  I  assure  you 
that  the  German  Emperor  will  be  the  loving 
friend  of  the  great  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid, 
as  well  as  of  the  300,000,000  Mohammedans 
who,  dwelling  dispersed  throughout  the  East, 
reverence  him  as  their  Caliph." 

To  cement  this  royal  friendship,  we  see 
gifts  exchanged  between  the  two  monarchs. 
On   the    one   hand,    all   the    costly    Oriental 


AFTER   THE   MASSACRES  85 

carpets  and  other  sumptuous  furniture  of 
the  Palace  in  which  the  newly-made  "Hadji" 
had  been  entertained;  and  on  the  other,  a 
portrait  of  the  German  royal  family,  and  a 
costly  fountain  donated  to  the  Constantinople 
streets,  still  wet  with  the  blood  of  10,000 
Armenian  martyrs.  To  such  base  uses  had 
a  portion  of  Christendom  become  openly 
converted ! 

But  this  was  not  all.  In  further  evidence 
of  the  infectiousness  of  the  rampant  evil  of 
this  period,  it  is  significant  to  note  that  it 
was  at  this  time  that  Russia,  weary  of  having 
all  her  "legitimate"  imperial  designs  forever 
thwarted,  decided  to  emulate  the  West,  and 
to  throw  off  all  pretence  at  protecting  the 
Eastern  Christians.  Almost  immediately  she 
began  to  adopt  something  like  the  Turkish 
attitude  with  regard  to  the  Armenians  of 
the  hitherto  happy  region  of  the  Caucasus 
with  a  view  to  their  ultimate  annihilation. 
"Armenia  without  the  Armenians,"  the  mur- 
derous 1895  slogan  of  Lobanoff,  the  Russian 
minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  indicates  the 
trend  of  the  new  pan-Slavic  policy.     Russia 


/ 


86  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

for  the  Russians,  Turkey  for  the  Turks,  the 
world  for  Germany!7 

And  thus  the  barbaric  doctrine  of  Ruth- 
lessness,  fostered,  we  must  admit,  by  the 
dishonorable  compromises  and  moral  inertia 
of  the  rest  of  the  world,  revived  and  spread. 
And  for  the  Armenians  all  hope  was  lost 
except  what  they  themselves  might  create 
and  wrest  from  a  situation  which  in  itself 
was  without  hope.  "Stranded  in  the  East, 
this  fragment  of  Europe,"  this  sublimely 
picturesque  defender  of  Christianity,  this 
singular  advocate  of  Democracy  and  Law, 
became  at  the  dawn  of  the  twentieth  century, 
prey  to  a  legion  of  enemies,  more  insidious 
and  menacing  than  ever  she  had  known  in 
the  whole  tragic  course  of  her  tumultuous 
history.  Never,  not  even  in  the  days  of 
Tamerlane  and  Genghis  Khan,  had  she  faced 
a  situation  so  dire.  Virtually,  in  the  interests 
of  the  great  Imperialisms,  the  race  had  been 
devoted  to  Death  in  the  open  market  of  the 
world. 

Of  course,  the  Armenians  themselves  were 
unaware  of  the  portentous  drama  which  was 
being  enacted  behind  the  scenes.     They  could 


AFTER  THE   MASSACRES  87 

see  clearly  enough  that  their  hopes  of  an 
European  intervention  had  been  chimerical, 
but  they  could  not  relinquish  thought  of 
an  ultimate  deliverance.  At  any  rate,  the 
present  necessity  was  to  help  themselves,  and 
in  all  their  history  there  is  nothing  finer  or 
more  touching  than  the  way  in  which  this 
smitten  and  abandoned  people,  rallying  from 
its  wounds  and  wrongs,  somehow  or  another 
recovered  its  morale  and  gradually  resumed 
its  old  constructive  place  in  the  general  life 
of  Turkey  and  of  the  world. 

The  massacres  had  cost  the  Armenians 
about  a  quarter  of  a  million  souls,  and  they 
had  been  followed  by  a  new  migration, 
necessarily  limited,  however,  because  of  the 
Sultan's  determination  not  to  let  his  prey 
escape.  Besides,  there  was  an  immense  loss 
in  wealth.  Their  homes  had  been  destroyed 
and  they  had  been  robbed  of  their  property. 
Some  of  the  oldest  business  houses  of  Con- 
stantinople and  elsewhere  had  been  obliged 
to  go  out  of  business  because  of  the  impov- 
erishment of  their  Armenian  creditors.  There 
was  a  vast  stream  of  orphans  and  defenceless 
old  people  to  be  cared  for,  homes  and  schools 


88  THE    TRAGEDY    OF    ARMENIA 

and  orphanages  to  be  built,  and  hospitals 
for  the  sick  and  wounded.  But  this  was  an 
undertaking  in  which  warm-hearted  foreign- 
ers, and  especially  Americans,  shared.  And 
presently  out  of  the  wreckage  came  clear 
evidence  that  the  aspiring  spirit  of  the  people 
had  been  by  no  means  extinguished. 

And  there  was  need  for  courage  and 
determination.  For  the  Government  had 
become  more  repressive  than  ever;  more 
extortionate  in  its  taxes,  more  severe  in  its 
penalties,  more  scandalously  indifferent  even 
to  such  justice  as  was  the  standard  of  the 
Turkish  courts-of-law.  The  censorship,  al- 
ready excessive,  became  ridiculous  in  its 
watchfulness.  The  Kurds  and  Circassians 
were  still  allowed  to  plunder  the  defenceless 
towns  and  villages  at  will.  The  prisons  and 
dungeons  were  filled  with  Armenian  victims. 
Spies  were  everywhere. 

To  some  races  the  alternative  of  submission 
might  have  suggested  itself,  but  to  the 
awakened  Armenian  spirit  there  appeared 
only  the  sacred  necessity  for  further  effort. 
Especially  among  the  generous  and  enlight- 
ened   youth    trained    in    the    universities    of 


AFTER   THE    MASSACRES 


Europe  and  America,  the  feeling  arose  that 
did  the  people  of  Europe  really  know  the 
character  of  the  sufferings,  and  the  nature 
and  history  of  the  afflicted  race,  they  would 
not  permit  their  governments  to  remain  in- 
different to  the  pledges  of  elementary  reform 
which  had  been  made. 

An  energetic  diplomatic  propaganda  was 
therefore  begun  by  them  in  London,  Paris, 
Tiflis,  Leipzig,  Geneva,  Alexandria,  Boston, 
New  York,  and  elsewhere,  with  the  object 
of  "converting"  Europe,  and  of  winning  the 
active  support  of  America.  Again,  as  before, 
the  object  aimed  at  was  not  separation  from 
Turkey,  but  reform.  Journals  were  published 
in  English,  French,  and  Armenian,  and  books 
and  articles  were  written  and  speeches  made 
in  which  the  nature  of  the  issue  was  elaborated 
upon.  The  Armenian  leaders  of  the  patriotic 
societies  made  overtures,  too,  to  the  Young 
Turks,  and  offered  to  unite  with  them  in 
demanding  the  restoration  of  the  constitution 
which  Odian  had  drawn  up  and  which  Abdul 
Hamid  had  proclaimed  and  then  revoked. 
And,  in  sure  token  of  the  undying  spiritual 
vitality  of  the  race,  there  sprang  into  pas- 


90  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

sionate  being  a  new  literature,  a  new  poetry, 
inspired  chiefly  by  love  of  freedom  and 
country,  and  more  rich  and  powerful,  more 
sustainedly  and  consciously  artistic,  perhaps, 
than  any  that  had  gone  before.  Aharonian, 
Siamento,  Varoudjan,  Toumanian,  Tcho- 
banian,  and  others — the  world  will  some  day 
pay  its  tribute  to  their  magnificent  song.8 

The  scope  of  this  brief  sketch  does  not 
permit  individual  tribute  to  the  men  of  genius 
and  faith  who,  at  a  period  of  history  funda- 
mentally hostile  to  the  rights  of  small  peoples, 
dared  unreservedly  to  devote  all  their  gifts 
and  resources  to  the  furtherance  of  this  holy 
but  desperate  cause.  But  Europe — now 
aligned,  because  of  German  aggression  in 
the  Near  East,  into  two  definite  and  mutually 
hostile  camps,  each  contending  for  the  control 
of  Turkish  territory — was  in  no  position  to 
interest  herself  in  the  internal  reforms  of 
that  country.  Therefore,  in  spite  of  toil  and 
sacrifice  and  the  co-operation  of  noble  indi- 
viduals in  England,  France,  America,  and 
other  countries,  no  definite  progress  was  made. 
The  appeal  on  behalf  of  Armenia  became  but 
a  voice  in  the  wilderness. 


AFTER   THE   MASSACRES  91 

Not  in  all  countries,  however,  were  the 
efforts  of  the  Armenian  patriots  equally 
abortive.  By  the  opening  years  of  the 
twentieth  century,  the  struggle  for  national 
preservation  in  Russian  Armenia  had  become 
acute,  pursuant  to  the  policy  entered  upon 
by  Lobanoff  at  the  time  of  the  massacres. 
During  these  years  the  Government  of  the 
Czar  attempted  to  bring  the  people  into 
complete  vassalage  to  a  general  scheme  of 
Russification.  The  plan  was  to  destroy  the 
national  identity  by  depriving  them  of  their 
language  and  of  their  Church,  and  to  this 
end  the  schools  were  closed  and  the  property 
and  revenues  of  the  ancient  Mother  Church 
at  Etchmiadzin  were  confiscated. 

A  singular  method  of  terrorization  was 
instituted  by  Christian  Russia — one  which 
smacks  of  the  policy  which  had  been  entered 
upon  so  shortly  before  by  the  government 
of  the  Kaiser.  The  religious  fanaticism  of 
the  Moslem  Tartars  of  the  Caucasian  region 
was  secretly  inflamed  by  the  local  Russian 
officials,  and  they  were  incited  to  war  upon 
their  Christian  neighbors,  with  whom  they 
had  hitherto  lived  in  peace.    As  a  result,  the 


92  THE   TRAGEDY    OP    ARMENIA 

whole  region  was  soon  in  the  grip  of  a 
fanatical  outburst.  But  the  Armenians  were 
well  co-ordinated,  and  they  possessed  arms. 
Consequently  they  were  able  to  defend 
themselves,  and  even  to  overcome  the  Tar- 
tar attacks.  The  dignified  but  determined 
passive  resistance  of  the  aged  Catholicos 
Khrimian,  too,  had  its  effect.  So  the  perse- 
cution fell  into  abeyance. 

A  little  later,  we  see  the  untiring  spirit  of 
the  Armenians  again  at  work  in  the  cause 
of  human  freedom,  this  time  in  Persia.  All 
who  have  followed  the  story  of  Persia's  ill- 
starred  but  glorious  attempt  to  take  her 
place  among  the  constitutionally  governed 
nations,  are  doubtless  familiar  with  the  part 
played  by  the  Armenian  prince,  Malcolm 
Khan,  for  some  years  Persian  minister  in 
London,  who  is  said  "to  have  sowed  the  first 
seeds  of  constitutional  government  in  Persia" ; 
and  with  the  name  of  the  other  Armenian 
leader,  Ephrem  Davidian,  who  later  distin- 
guished himself  in  the  same  cause.  But  few, 
I  believe,  are  aware  of  the  heroic  career 
which  preceded  Davidian's  short-lived  victory 
for  Persia,  and,  consequently,  for  his  country- 


AFTER   THE    MASSACRES  93 

men  who  had  come  under  her  domination. 
His  brilliant  but  tragic  stoiy,  so  symbolic  of 
the  fortunes  which  have  forever  dogged  the 
footsteps  of  his  unfortunate  nation,  has  been 
so  admirably  summarized  by  that  remarkable 
woman  of  the  same  race,  Mrs.  Diana  Agabeg 
Apcar,  that  it  seems  most  fitting  to  let  the 
tale  be  told  in  her  own  thrilling  words. 

"In  1908,"  she  writes,  "Shah  Muhammad 
Ali  Mirza  was  deposed  and  constitutional 
government  established  in  Persia.  The 
cordiality  between  the  Armenians  and  the 
Persians  was  great  at  that  period,  and 
the  leader  and  generalissimo  of  the  whole 
successful  movement  was  Ephrem  Davidian, 
known  in  Persia  as  Ephrem  Khan.  He 
escaped  from  Saghalien  prison  in  1891. 
Fighting  with  a  score  of  companions  against 
a  whole  Turkish  regiment  in  Turkish 
Armenia,  these  young  men  when  hard  pressed 
crossed  the  frontier  into  Russian  Armenia 
and  were  there  immediately  seized  by  the 
Russian  authorities  and  consigned  to  a  prison 
in  Saghalien.  Escaping,  Ephrem  became  the 
leader  of  the  nationalistic  movement  in  Persia 
in    1908,   and,   as   is   well   known,   not   only 


94  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

defeated  the  ex-Shah's  forces,  but  kept  the 
peace  of  Teheran.  Ephrem  was  idolized 
by  the  Persian  Constitutionalists  and  when 
assassinated  by  the  agents  of  the  Russian 
government,  was  buried  with  royal  honors  by 
the  Persian  people.,, 

There  seems  to  be  little  need  of  dwelling 
upon  the  so-called  revolution  which  at  this 
time  occurred  in  Turkey,  and  which  led  to 
the  dethronement  of  Abdul  Hamid  and  the 
proclamation  of  a  constitution.  The  word 
"re volution"  in  this  connection  is  at  best  a 
misnomer.  It  was  an  affair  in  which  the 
people  had  absolutely  no  part.  It  was  simply 
the  seizure  of  power  by  a  military  clique 
trained  in  Germany  or  by  Germans,  and 
although  it  gave  to  the  Armenians  a  brief 
period  of  illusory  hope,9  it  does  not  deserve 
to  be  distinguished  from  the  rule  which  pre- 
ceded it,  except  in  so  far  as  it  has  proved  to 
be  more  scientifically  cruel  and  destructive. 

The  frightful  massacre  at  Adana  in  which 
twenty  thousand  persons  were  slain  within  a 
few  days,  the  very  year  following  the  procla- 
mation, shows  only  too  emphatically,  as  some 


AFTER  THE   MASSACRES  95 

one  has  said,  that  the  "Young"  Turks  were 
very  like  the  "Old."  And  so  it  came  about 
that  in  a  Turkey  possessed  of  a  representative 
parliament,  the  Armenians,  in  order  to  obtain 
security  for  "life,  honor,  and  property,"  were 
once  more  obliged  to  have  formal  recourse  to 
the  Powers  which  had  signed  the  Treaty  of 
Berlin. 

The  explanation  of  this  anomalous  situation 
is  not  difficult  to  seek.  There  had  been 
developing  among  the  Young  Turks  and  their 
followers  a  political  credo,  less  ambitious, 
possibly,  than  the  ancient  pan-Islamic  tide, 
but  not  less  arrogant  and  ruthless;  Turkey 
for  the  Turks  was  but  a  part  of  the  pan- 
Turanian  scheme  which  had  come  into  being 
as  a  result  of  German  stimulus  and  example. 
"In  Parliament,"  says  Viscount  Bryce,  "the 
program  took  such  form  as  a  bill  to  make 
the  Turkish  language  the  universal  and 
compulsory  medium  of  secondary  education" 
— a  death  blow  to  Armenian  progress  andj 
nationality  since  "the  vast  majority  of  the 
secondary  schools  of  the  Empire  were,  of 
course,  American,  Armenian  or  Greek."  But 
regardless  of  the  fact  that  the  Turkish  Ian- 


96  THE    TRAGEDY    OF   ARMENIA 

guage  was  barren  of  a  literature  which  would 
in  any  way  meet  the  needs  of  the  times,  the 
Young  Turks  insisted  upon  this  form  of 
Ottomanization,  and  upon  others  equally 
impossible  and  reactionary.  "And  the  Arme- 
nian deputies" — to  quote  Viscount  Bryce 
again — "found  themselves  opposing  it  in  con- 
cert with  the  liberal  party,  which  included  the 
Arab  bloc  and  stood  for  the  toleration  of 
national  individualities."  In  addition,  the 
Armenians  had  positive  demands  to  make, 
such  as  a  mixed  Gendarmarie — open  to  Turks 
and  Armenians  but  closed  to  Kurds,  who 
continued  to  practice  their  old  habit  of  brig- 
andage— and  for  an  actual,  and  not  merely 
nominal,  equality  between  Christians  and 
Moslems  before  the  law. 

But  the  Young  Turks  had  become  deaf  to 
all  reason.  Intoxicated  by  the  "superior  race" 
idea,  an  altogether  unfounded  belief  in  their 
own  abilities,  based  in  part  upon  centuries  of 
delusive  racial  privilege,  had  taken  possession 
of  them.  And  as  affairs  proceeded,  and  the 
actual  administration  of  the  Empire  called 
more  and  more  imperatively  for  men  of  prac- 
tical sense  and  ability,  it  maddened  them  to 


AFTER   THE    MASSACRES  97 

discover  that  the  race  whom  they  had  always 
despised  and  outlawed  was  really  the  more 
capable  of  performing  the  work  of  the  state, 
as  well  as  of  conducting  the  other  affairs  of 
life. 

The  foundation  for  the  jealousy  which 
took  possession  of  them  is  evident  from  the 
anaylses  made  by  many  European  authorities, 
among  them  no  less  a  personage  than  Dr.  Paul 
Rohrbach,  who,  as  an  exponent  of  the  Drang 
nach  Osten  program,  spent  four  years  in 
Turkey  for  the  purpose  of  surveying  the 
situation  from  every  point  of  view.  During 
this  time  he  came  to  feel  a  very  high  and 
cordial  admiration  for  the  Armenians  as  a 
race,  and  it  is  evidently  with  a  view  of  bring- 
ing them  to  the  attention  of  the  Home  Gov- 
ernment as  a  valuable  asset  in  the  upbuilding 
of  the  future  German  Eastern  Empire,  that 
he  dilates  upon  their  abilities  and  virtues. 

According  to  Dr.  Rohrbach  (writing 
shortly  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war)  the 
Armenians  played  a  part  in  the  intellectual 
and  economic  life  of  Turkey  "entirely  out 
of  proportion  to  their  number";  the  Arme- 
nian   schools    supported    by    the    voluntary 


98  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

offerings  of  the  people,  and  exclusive  of 
all  missionary  establishments,  exceeded  the 
Turkish  schools  four  to  one,  and  were  much 
better;  the  trades  and  the  liberal  professions 
were  in  Armenian  hands,  and,  in  general, 
the  economic  life  of  the  Empire  depended 
upon  them,  and  this  "not  because  of  a  singular 
lack  of  business  scruple,  or  love  of  gain,  but 
through  their  innate  capacity  for  labor!" 

Dr.  Rohrbach  further  states  that  their 
ability  to  read  and  write  Turkish,  in  addition 
to  their  "general  psychic  energy  and  assiduity 
for  labor,"  accounted  for  the  relatively  high 
number  of  Armenian  employees  in  the  service 
of  the  Turkish  administration,  without  whom, 
he  declares,  "the  machinery  of  the  State  would 
absolutely  stop."  And  he  adds  that  according 
to  the  testimony  of  the  Constantinople 
press,  the  ministries  of  the  two  Armenians, 
Noradounghian  and  Halad  j  ian — Internal 
Affairs  and  Public  Works — were  the  only 
ones  which  had  accomplished  anything. 

But  all  this  was  beside  the  purpose,  so  far 
as  the  "Home  Government"  was  concerned. 
Probably  the  plan  to  subdue  or  to  wreck  the 
Armenian   people   had   been   already   provi- 


AFTER   THE   MASSACRES  99 

sionally  formulated  by  Constantinople  and 
Berlin;  and  the  two  Inspectors-General 
commissioned  in  1913  by  Germany  and  Russia 
to  investigate  the  Armenian  grievances  on 
behalf  of  the  Signatory  Powers  were  doubt- 
less merely  a  blind,  at  least  so  far  as  the 
former  was  concerned.  If  the  East  was  to 
be  converted  into  a  new  type  of  despotism 
and  the  way  made  safe  for  a  new  tyranny, 
it  was  certainly  not  the  Armenians  who  would 
play  the  leading  and  compliant  part.  At  the 
suitable  moment,  all  factors  hostile  to  such  a 
purpose  must  be  eliminated,  even  though  it 
meant  the  annihilation  of  an  entire  race. 

The  shadow  of  the  ultimate  catastrophe 
was  therefore  already  black  upon  the  land 
when  Germany  gave  the  signal  for  the 
universal  conflagration. 


Chapter  VI 
IN  THE  WORLD  WAR 

THE  extreme  precariousness  of  their 
position  must  have  been  sensed  by  the 
Armenians  at  the  moment  of  the  out- 
break of  the  war.  Through  the  expostula- 
tions of  their  representatives  in  the  Turkish 
parliament  and  elsewhere,  their  grievances 
against  the  Young  Turk  government  and 
their  distrust  of  this  rule  had  become  matters 
of  official  and  popular  knowledge.  A  war 
would  give  their  enemy  the  opportunity  to 
wreak  vengeance  upon  them.  The  military 
entente  between  the  Young  Turks  and  Ger- 
many was  already  well  known  and  Turkish 
participation  on  the  German  side  was  more 
than  a  probability.  Turkish  societies,  called 
"patriotic,"  had  recently  sent  threatening 
letters  to  the  Armenian  Patriarch,  to  the 
editors  of  the  Armenian  newspapers,  to 
Boghos  Nubar  Pasha,  President  of  the 
Armenian  Delegation,  and  to  others  who 
were  helping  to  bring  the  Armenian  situation 


IN    THE    vVOKLD    WAK  101 

before  the  attention  of  Europe.  The  follow- 
ing is  one  of  many  similar  documents,  signed 
by  numbers  of  Turks,  which  these  societies 
had  sent  to  the  Armenian  press  of  Constanti- 
nople : 

"We  advise  you  not  to  speak  any  more 
of  Armenian  reforms.  If  you  do  the  matter 
will  become  serious  and  we  will  massacre  you, 
old  and  young.  We  will  eviscerate  you  in 
the  open  streets,  and  you  will  find  the  former 
massacres  desirable  in  comparison  to  those 
which  we  shall  execute."10 

At  the  same  time,  bands  of  Turkish 
"nationalists"  had  gone  nightly  through  the 
streets  of  the  Armenian  quarter,  marking  in 
red  and  black  insulting  words  and  threats  of 
death  upon  the  doors  of  the  Armenian  houses, 
churches,  and  schools.  Furthermore,  just  at 
this  period  the  two  Inspectors-General  com- 
missioned by  the  Powers  to  examine  into  the 
Armenian  situation  had  already  arrived! 

But,  aside  from  the  actual  peril  of  their 
position,  there  were  moral  reasons  why  the 
possibility  of  war  between  Turkey  and  the 
Entente  should  be  painful  and  repugnant  to 
the  Armenians.    By  virtue  of  similarity  of 


102  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

character  and  ideals  they  had  always  been 
drawn  to  the  people  of  France  and  England, 
and  to  the  people  of  Russia  they  were  united 
not  only  by  a  certain  understanding  and 
sympathy,  but,  in  the  Caucasus,  by  the  tie 
of  blood.  To  fight  Russia  would  be  to  help 
in  the  slaughter  of  their  own  brothers. 
Hitherto,  in  all  the  Turco-European  wars 
except  the  Balkan  War  of  1912,  in  which 
as  citizens  of  constitutionally  governed 
Turkey  they  had  been  obliged  to  participate, 
they  had  been  spared  the  necessity  of  taking 
the  field  on  the  side  of  their  deadly  enemy 
because  of  their  proscription  as  Christians 
from  the  Turkish  military  service.  But  now, 
if  the  constitution  were  lived  up  to,  they 
would,  in  the  event  of  war,  be  obliged  to  take 
up  arms  in  defence  of  the  despotic  Young 
Turks  and  the  Central  Powers,  and  on  behalf 
of  principles  which  they  had  always  abhorred. 
What  had  they  been  consistently  throughout 
their  history  but  a  lance  never  in  rest,  a  pil- 
grim always  on  the  road,  a  martyr  forever 
at  the  stake  in  the  cause  of  political  and 
religious  democracy?  A  sardonic  reminder  of 
their  known  allegiance  to  these  things  ap- 


IN   THE   WORLD    WAR  103 

peared  in  the  Constantinople  comic  paper, 
"Karagoz"  in  the  early  days  of  the  war.11  It 
depicted  two  Turks  in  earnest  discussion. 
"Where  do  you  get  your  war  news?"  asked 
one.  "I  do  not  need  war  news,"  replied  the 
other.  "I  can  follow  the  faces  of  the  Arme- 
nians I  meet.  When  they  are  happy  I  know 
the  Allies  are  winning,  and  when  they  are 
depressed  I  know  that  the  Germans  have  had 
a  victory." 

Just  as  there  is  no  equivalent  for  the  word 
"compromise"  in  all  their  rich  language,  so 
there  had  been  no  room  for  it  in  the  course 
of  their  hazardous  national  existence.  It 
was  too  late  for  them  to  adopt  a  renegade 
policy.  At  best  the  officials  and  the  men  of 
military  age  could  but  perform  their  duties 
grimly  and  without  show  of  enthusiasm, 
hoping  against  hope  that  they  might  thereby 
purchase  immunity  for  the  civilian  popula- 
tion from  the  D jihad,  or  the  massacre,  which 
a  general  disturbance  in  Turkey  was  likely 
to  portend,  and  of  which  there  were  already 
threatening  rumors. 

As  Turkish  sympathy  for  the  Central 
Powers  grew  more  and  more  apparent,  it 


104  THE   TRAGEDY    OF    ARMENIA 

became  the  one  aim  of  the  Armenian  leaders 
to  dissuade  the  Government  from  joining 
forces  with  these  nations.  As  members  of  the 
Turkish  parliament  and  as  Ottoman  citizens 
they  tried  to  make  it  clear  that  such  a  course 
would  be  fatal  to  the  life  of  the  Empire. 
In  this  opinion  some  of  the  Turks  of  the 
Conservative  party  are  said  to  have  concurred. 
But  when  the  Young  Turks  showed  no 
inclination  to  heed  the  advice,  some  of  the 
deputies  of  the  interior  provinces  and  other 
Armenian  leaders  decided  to  meet  in  confer- 
ence at  Van  and  Erzeroum  for  the  purpose 
of  determining  what  course,  in  the  event  of 
war,  would  best  safeguard  the  Armenian 
population. 

It  is  vitally  important  for  us  to  realize 
that  the  question  of  winning  the  Armenians 
to  the  side  of  the  Central  Powers  had  already 
been  uppermost  in  the  minds  of  the  Young 
Turks;  and  that  at  a  time  when  so  much 
hinged  upon  the  attitude  which  this  or  that 
people  would  take,  when  other  nationalities 
were  bargaining  back  and  forth  for  terms 
with  both  of  the  great  contestants,  the  Arme- 
nians of  Turkey,  too,  had  at  least  an  ostensible 


IN    THE    WORLD    WAR  105 

chance  to  barter  their  honor  for  their  lives. 
There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  their 
ultimate  destruction  had  been  determined 
upon  from  the  outset.  (See  "Documents 
presented  to  Viscount  Grey"  by  Viscount 
Bryce — English  Blue  Book.)  But  the  Young 
Turks,  intriguers  as  well  as  murderers,  pre- 
ferred, if  possible,  first  to  utilize  their  prey 
for  their  own  disgraceful  ends.  The  story  of 
this  attempt  and  its  failure  of  accomplishment 
reflects  the  sheer  heroism  of  the  Armenian 
people  and  is  one  of  the  noblest  episodes  in 
the  annals  of  the  war. 

The  scene  occurred  simultaneously  in  the 
cities  already  referred  to,  Van  and  Erzeroum, 
— Van,  originally  founded  by  Semiramis  as 
a  summer  city,  later  the  capital  of  a  long  line 
of  Armenian  kings;  a  city  overlooking  the 
great  salt  lake  of  Van,  five  thousand  feet 
above  sea  level;  a  beautiful  city  made  more 
beautiful  by  the  industry  of  her  inhabitants; 
a  city  of  orchards,  vineyards,  and  gardens; 
and  Erzeroum,  situated  at  an  even  higher 
altitude  and,  like  Van,  in  the  center  of  that 
part  of  ancient  Armenia  to  the  soil  of  which 
the  race  had  clung  with  the  greatest  tenacity. 


108  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

It  was  to  these  classic  Armenian  strongholds 
that  the  Enver-Talaat  government  sent  their 
representatives  for  the  purpose  of  inducing 
the  Armenian  leaders,  assembled  there  in 
convention,  to  incite  their  brethren  across  the 
Russian  frontier  to  take  up  arms  on  the  side 
of  Turkey. 

The  story  comes  to  us  through  many  chan- 
nels, but  I  quote  it  as  given  in  Document  21 
in  the  English  Blue  Book  already  referred  to: 

According  to  the  project  of  the  Young  Turks,  the 
Armenians  were  to  pledge  themselves  to  form  legions 
of  volunteers  and  to  send  them  to  the  Caucasus  with 
the  Turkish  propagandists,  to  prepare  the  way  there 
for  the  insurrection. 

The  Young  Turk  representatives  had  already  brought 
their  propagandists  with  them  to  Erzeroum — 27  indi- 
viduals of  Persian,  Turkish,  Lesghian  and  Circassian 
nationality.  The  Turks  tried  to  persuade  the  Arme- 
nians that  a  Caucasian  insurrection  was  inevitable; 
that  very  shortly  the  Tartars,  Georgians  and  moun- 
taineers would  revolt,  and  that  the  Armenians  would 
consequently  be  obliged  to  follow  them. 

They  even  sketched  the  future  map  of  the  Caucasus. 

The  Turks  offered  to  the  Georgians  the  provinces  of 
Koutais,  and  of  Tiflis,  the  Batoum  district  and  a  part 
of  the  province  of  Trebizond;  to  the  Tartars,  Shousha, 
the  mountain  country  as  far  as  Vladikavkaz,  Bakou, 


IN   THE    WORLD    WAR  107 

and  a  part  of  the  province  of  Elisavetpol;  to  the 
Armenians  they  offered  Kars,  the  province  of  Erivan, 
a  part  of  Elisavetpol,  a  fragment  of  the  province  of 
Erzeroum,  Van  and  Bitlis.  According  to  the  Young 
Turk  scheme,  all  these  groups  were  to  become  autono- 
mous under  a  Turkish  protectorate.  The  Erzeroum 
Congress  refused  these  proposals,  and  advised  the 
Young  Turks  not  to  hurl  themselves  into  the  European 
conflagration. 

The  Young  Turks  were  irritated  by  this  advice. 

"This  is  treason !"  cried  Boukhar-ed-Din-Shakir,  one 
of  the  delegates  from  Constantinople:  "You  take  sides 
with  Russia  in  a  moment  as  critical  as  this;  you  refuse 
to  defend  the  Government;  you  forget  that  you  are 
enjoying  its  hospitality!" 

But  the  Armenians  held  to  their  decision. 

Once  more  before  the  outbreak  of  war  between 
Russia  and  Turkey,  the  Young  Turks  tried  to  obtain 
the  Armenians'  support.  This  time  they  opened  their 
pourparlers  with  more  moderate  proposals,  and 
negotiated  with  the  Armenian  representatives  of  each 
Vilayet.  At  Van,  the  pourparlers  were  conducted  by 
the  provincial  governor  Tahsin  Bey,  and  by  Nadji 
Bey;  at  Moush,  by  Servet  Bey  and  Iskhan  Bey;  at 
Erzeroum  by  the  same  Tahsin  Bey  and  by  others. 

The  project  of  an  Armenian  rising  in  the  Caucasus 
was  abandoned.  Instead,  the  Ottoman  Armenians  were 
to  unite  themselves  with  the  Transcaucasian  Tartars, 
whose  insurrection  was,  according  to  the  Young  Turks, 
a  certainty. 


108  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

Once  more  the  Armenians  refused. 

From  the  moment  the  war  broke  out,  the  Armenian 
soldiers  had  presented  themselves  for  service  at  their 
regimental  depots,  but  they  refused  categorically  to 
form  irregular  bands. 

In  case  of  war  between  Turkey  and  Russia,  they 
said,  the  Armenians  on  both  sides  of  the  frontier  must 
do  their  duty  by  their  respective  governments. 

Meanwhile  another  sinister  drama  was  being 
enacted  on  the  other  side  of  the  Russian 
frontier.  When  Russia  learned  that  the  Turks 
were  mobilizing,  she  sent  representatives  to 
address  the  Armenians  of  the  Caucasus  and 
to  promise  them  that  if  they  would  help 
her  to  the  utmost  she  would  guarantee  future 
autonomy  to  the  Armenians  of  Turkey. 
Word,  too,  is  said  to  have  come  to  them — 
unofficially,  I  believe, — from  the  other  Powers 
of  the  Entente  telling  them  that  if  they  would 
do  all  in  their  power  to  hold  the  Turk  at  bay 
on  the  Eastern  front  all  help  would  be  forth- 
coming from  France  and  England.  The  race 
in  whose  defence  not  one  single  shot  had  ever 
been  fired  had  suddenly  become,  because  of 
their  strategic  position,  a  determining  factor 
in  that  critical  region — one  of  the  gateways 


IN    THE    WORLD    WAR  109 

to  India.  And  they  were  being  leaned  upon 
by  a  world  which  had  abandoned  them  in  their 
long  struggle ! 

The  Armenians  of  the  Caucasus  knew  very 
well  that  the  designs  of  Russia  were  funda- 
mentally unfriendly  to  them,  but  they  recog- 
nized the  world  aspect  of  the  struggle,  and 
readily  agreed  to  organize  volunteer  corps  to 
help  the  regular  army,  and  a  committee  was 
formed  at  Tiflis  to  recruit  them.  But  the 
Armenian  regular  soldiers,  to  the  number  of 
160,000,  and  the  20,000  volunteers  who  almost 
immediately  responded  to  the  call,  showed 
such  eagerness  for  action  that  Russia  became 
alarmed.  A  brilliant  Armenian  defence  on 
the  home  soil  might  lead  to  national  ambition 
and  future  complications.  So,  to  the  con- 
sternation of  the  Armenian  community,  most 
of  the  regulars  were  transferred  to  the  Poland 
and  Galician  fronts,  and  old  Russian  reservists 
who  knew  nothing  of  this  tangled  mountain 
region  were  sent  to  guard  the  lines.  More- 
over, Russia  equipped  but  grudgingly  the 
Armenian  volunteers  and  instead  of  sending 
them  as  a  compact  unit,  arranged  to  have  them 
scattered  over  the  front. 


110  THE   TRAGEDY  OF  ARMENIA 

The  Armenians  saw  that  Russia  was  not 
really  with  them.  The  High  Command  not 
only  did  all  in  its  power  to  make  the  situa- 
tion difficult  for  the  soldiers:  it  behaved  in  a 
very  unkind  and  unscrupulous  way  to  the 
Armenian  civilian  population.  Still  the  Arme- 
nians tried  to  keep  their  spirits.  The  volun- 
teers were  popular  with  the  Russian  rank 
and  file  and,  eager  to  have  part  in  a  war 
waged  against  their  most  cruel  foe,  they 
overlooked  the  unsatisfactory  stand  of  the 
Russian  government. 

While  these  events  were  progressing  in 
Russia,  the  Young  Turks,  infuriated  by  the 
refusal  of  the  Armenians  of  Turkey  to 
acquiesce  in  their  nefarious  and  much  counted- 
upon  Caucasian  scheme,  were  putting  the 
loyalty  of  these  their  fellow  citizens  to  the 
severest  tests  by  "requisitioning"  their  prop- 
erty in  a  wholly  wanton  and  ominous  way, 
and  by  sending  battalions  formed  exclusively 
of  Armenians  to  the  most  exposed  fronts, 
there  to  be  mown  down  by  French  and  British 
shells.  Naturally  these  outrages  filled  the 
Armenians  with  intense  indignation,  but  in 
general  they  restrained  themselves,  and  care- 


IN   THE    WORLD    WAR  111 

fully  refrained  from  any  act  of  even  seeming 
disloyalty,  in  order  to  give  no  pretext  for 
further  reprisals. 

But  there  was  no  avoiding  the  end  that  had 
been  prepared  for  them.  It  had  been  too  long 
an  obsession  of  the  Turkish  mind.  And  now 
that  it  was  clear  both  to  the  Turks  and  to 
their  German  accomplices  that  the  Armenians 
would  never  consent  to  become  the  tools  of 
Turco-German  design,  there  was  every  reason, 
to  their  mind,  why  it  should  be  immediately 
accomplished.  For  the  first  time  in  years 
they  felt  themselves  wholly  free  of  the  re- 
straint which  the  attitude  of  Europe  had 
hitherto  to  some  extent  imposed  upon  them. 
More  than  that,  they  enjoyed  the  full  pro- 
tection of  a  Power  whose  philosophy  coincided 
exactly  with  their  own  and  whom  they  be- 
lieved to  be  invincible.  The  war  hung  like  a 
curtain  of  fire  between  them  and  the  outside 
world.  In  the  chaos  of  the  moment  they  could 
work  out  their  intentions  wholly  unchecked 
and  without  fear  of  punishment. 

But  unlike  the  days  of  Abdul  Hamid, 
some  of  the  Armenians  were  now  armed,  and 
unless  they  could  be  rendered  defenceless  the 


112  THE    TRAGEDY    OF    ARMENIA 

struggle  would  take  on  the  character  not  of 
massacre  but  of  civil  war,  an  eventuality  by 
all  means  to  be  avoided. 

As  a  preliminary  step,  therefore,  they 
decided  to  murder  the  Armenian  soldiery 
throughout  the  country  simultaneously  and 
en  masse,  after  forming  them  into  "labor 
battalions" ;  and  at  the  same  time  to  decoy 
and  murder  the  prominent  Armenian  leaders. 
Then  they  would  fall  on  the  civilian  popula- 
tion, and  as  Talaat  Bey  expressed  it,  "put  an 
end  to  the  Armenian  question  for  the  next 
fifty  years."  It  was  a  piece  of  perfectly  regu- 
lar Turco-Prussian  strategy. 

In  less  than  a  year  the  deed  has  been  ac- 
complished. The  Armenians  of  Turkey  to 
the  number  of  about  a  million,  old  and  young, 
rich  and  poor,  and  of  both  sexes,  had  been 
collectively  drowned,  burned,  bayonetted, 
starved,  bastinadoed,  or  otherwise  tortured  to 
death,  or  else  deported  on  foot,  penniless,  and 
without  food,  to  the  burning  Arabian  deserts. 

How  shall  we  name  the  dastardly  crime 
which  robbed  them  of  life  and  homeland? 
How  shall  we  describe  that  catastrophe,  the 


IN   THE   WORLD    WAR  113 

detailed  accounts  of  which,  as  Mr.  A.  P. 
Hacobian,  of  London,  in  his  book  "Armenia 
and  the  War,"  so  fitly  says,  "unfolds  to  the 
horrified  gaze  of  mankind  a  vast  column  of 
human  smoke  and  anguish  rising  to  the 
heavens  as  the  incense  of  the  most  fearful  yet 
most  glorious  mass-martyrdom  the  world  has 
ever  seen"?  To  attempt  to  do  so — is  it  not 
almost  an  irreverence  to  the  august  dead? 
We  of  the  powerful  West,  who  might  long 
ago  have  averted  all  this  agony  and  appalling 
waste  of  precious  human  resource,  had  we 
been  honorable  enough  to  fulfill  even  the 
most  elementary  obligations  of  our  great 
religion — what  is  there  for  us  to  say  by  way 
of  sympathetic  tribute  in  the  presence  of  this 
sublime  agony,  this  breaking  of  a  nation's 
body,  this  rending  of  a  nation's  soul? 

It  is  for  us  to  remember  that  they  went  to 
their  death,  man,  woman,  and  child,  not  only 
as  martyrs  to  the  sacred  ideal  for  which  their 
fathers  had  made  immemorial  sacrifices;  not 
only  as  victims  of  hideous  despotism  and  base 
political  intrigue;  but  also  virtually  as  noble 
prisoners  of  war  in  the  interest  of  our  cause 
which,  in  spite  of  threatening  pressure,  they 


114  THE  TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

had  resolutely  refused  to  betray.  A  poig- 
nantly magnanimous  climax  to  a  singularly 
unbefriended  national  career!  Yet,  although 
until  "the  future  dares  forget  the  Past,  their 
fate  and  fame  shall  be  an  echo  and  a  light  unto 
eternity,"  how  would  the  great  heart  of  man- 
kind wish  that  in  the  midst  of  the  flames  which 
were  destroying  our  temporizing  and  mate- 
rialistic civilization,  these,  the  wholly  innocent, 
might  somehow  have  been  spared! 

But,  no,  amid  the  smoke  and  glare  of  the 
universal  conflagration,  the  tragedy  plunges 
forward,  and  a  scene  from  which  we  shrink 
forces  itself  upon  our  eyes.  Those  cordons 
of  men  and  boys  bound  together  and  hurled 
from  precipices  or  thrown  into  the  sea,  or 
bayonetted,  still  warm  and  sometimes  still 
breathing,  into  great  trench  graves  which  they 
themselves  had  dug,  or  felled  by  the  axe,  each 
in  his  turn,  as  they  wait,  herded  in  lonely 
valley,  or  in  prison  yard,  or  rained  upon  by 
the  fire  of  great  guns  as  they  stand  awaiting 
"orders/'  or  listening  to  the  reading  of  some 
spurious  proclamation;  those  women  "praying 
in  the  flames,"  or  lying  in  their  own  and  their 
children's  blood  upon  the  hearthstones  or  by 


IN   THE    WORLD    WAR  115 

the  roadside;  the  unending  procession  of  the 
deported  who,  uprooted  from  their  ancestral 
home,  dragged  from  the  beautiful  springtime 
of  the  Armenian  highlands,  are  driven  forth 
to  the  scorching  deserts,  there  to  die  of 
hunger,  heat  and  drought;  the  mothers  dying 
in  childbirth  upon  the  road,  or  begging  the 
casual  passer-by  to  take  from  them  their 
adored  and  lovely  babies  and  being  refused 
even  that  tragic  boon;  those  mothers  who, 
unable  to  carry  their  children,  or  to  endure 
the  sight  of  their  suffering,  await  with  both 
eagerness  and  dread  the  sight  of  lake  or  river 
into  which  they  may  cast  them  as  a  final 
act  of  mercy;  those  children  crying  for  their 
murdered  parents,  for  their  lost  brothers  and 
sisters,  as  they  too  march  forward  to  their 
own  deaths;  the  maidens  weeping  for  their 
lost  lovers  or  struggling  with  the  demons 
who  drag  them  off  to  slavery;  all  while  Turk- 
ish and  German  officers  look  brutally  on, 
and  give  orders  to  the  convicts — recruited 
from  the  prisons  for  this  murderous  purpose 
— who  herd  the  procession  ever  forward  be- 
neath the  blows  of  their  heavy  goads:  these 
are  but  the  blurred  outlines  of  that  immense 


116  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

hecatomb  to  the  gods   of  Lust   and  Blood 
which  dominated  the  land. 

But  the  dead  will  not  permit  us  to  remain 
with  them.  There  are  other  heroes  who  com- 
mand our  homage.  In  the  midst  of  the 
universal  carnage,  the  civilian  population  of 
certain  towns  and  villages,  raised  to  a  pitch 
of  superhuman  courage  by  the  knowledge  of 
what  threatened  both  them  and  their  nation, 
waged  a  defensive  warfare  which,  considering 
all  the  circumstances,  may  justly  be  regarded 
as  absolutely  unmatched.  In  most  cases,  after 
these  stubborn  resistances  had  failed  for  want 
of  ammunition,  the  inhabitants  were  burned 
in  their  churches,  or  in  wooden  concentration 
camps  erected  for  the  purpose,  put  to  the 
sword  or  tortured  to  death ;  but  in  the  districts 
bordering  the  Russian  frontier  they  sometimes 
managed  to  escape  by  throwing  in  their  lot 
with  the  Russo- Armenian  volunteers  and  the 
regular  Russian  army,  retreating  or  advanc- 
ing with  these  as  Fortune  dictated. 

These  defenses,  although  part  of  the  chain 
which  united  those  of  Belgium,  France,  Italy, 
and   Serbia,   were   conducted   under   circum- 


IN   THE    WORLD    WAR  117 

stances  which  recall  Thermopylae,  and  the 
famous  sieges  of  antiquity.  They  are  destined 
to  live  forever  in  the  immortal  Hero-Book 
of  our  battle-scarred  world.  In  the  midst  of 
a  struggle  carried  on  by  means  of  submarines, 
gas  bombs,  air  ships  and  tanks,  these  pictures 
of  primitive  warfare  flash  out  upon  us  veri- 
tably as  from  the  Classic  Age. 

Although  the  records  of  the  towns  and 
villages  of  each  vilayet  shine  with  deeds  of 
individual  and  community  valor,  in  certain 
spots,  like  Van,  Sassoun,  and  Djibal-Moussa, 
Armenian  heroism  was  illustrated  in  more 
commanding  if  not  in  more  intensified  form. 

The  wonderful  story  of  Djibal-Moussa,  a 
town  of  Cilician  Armenia  overlooking  the 
Mediterranean,  is  bound  to  become  a  classic, 
both  because  of  its  gallant  and  picturesque 
quality,  and  because  of  the  thrilling  rescue 
of  the  beleagured  mountaineers  by  the  God- 
sent  French  flagship,  Ste.  Jeanne  d'Arc! 

The  resistance  of  Sassoun,  too,  although 
fatal  in  its  ending,  will  forever  enhearten 
the  souls  of  valiant  men.  Let  me  quote  the 
story  as  it  comes  to  us  in  Document  22  of 
the  English  Blue  Book: 


118  THE    TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

While  the  "Butcher"  battalions  of  Djevdet  Bey  and 
the  regulars  of  Kiazim  Bey  were  engaged  in  Bitlis 
and  Moush,  some  cavalry  were  sent  to  Sassoun  early  in 
July  to  encourage  the  Kurds  who  had  been  defeated 
by  the  Armenians  at  the  beginning  of  June.  The 
Turkish  cavalry  invaded  the  lower  valley  of  Sassoun 
and  captured  a  few  villages  after  stout  fighting.  In 
the  meantime  the  reorganized  Kurdish  tribes  attempted 
to  close  on  Sassoun  from  the  South,  West,  and  North. 
During  the  last  fortnight  of  July  almost  incessant  fight- 
ing went  on,  sometimes  even  during  the  night.  On  the 
whole,  the  Armenians  held  their  own  on  all  fronts  and 
expelled  the  Kurds  from  their  advanced  positions. 
However,  the  people  of  Sassoun  had  other  anxieties  to 
worry  about.  The  population  had  doubled  since  their 
brothers  who  had  escaped  from  the  plains  had  sought 
refuge  in  their  mountains;  the  millet  crop  of  the  last 
season  had  been  a  failure;  all  honey,  fruit,  and  other 
local  produce  had  been  consumed,  and  the  people  had 
been  feeding  on  unsalted  roast  mutton  (they  had  not 
even  any  salt  to  make  the  mutton  more  sustaining)  ; 
finally,  the  ammunition  was  in  no  way  sufficient  for  the 
requirements  of  heavy  fighting.  But  the  worst  had  yet 
to  come.  Kiazim  Bey,  after  reducing  the  town  and 
the  plain  of  Moush,  rushed  his  army  to  Sassoun  for  a 
new  effort  to  overwhelm  these  brave  mountaineers. 
Fighting  was  renewed  on  all  fronts  throughout  the 
Sassoun  district.  Big  guns  made  carnage  among  the 
Armenian  ranks.  Roupen  tells  me  that  Gorioun, 
Dikran,  and  twenty  others  of  their  best  fighters  were 


IN   THE   WOULD    WAR  119 

killed  by  a  single  shell,  which  burst  in  their  midst. 
Encouraged  by  the  presence  of  guns,  the  cavalry  and 
Kurds   pushed  on  with  relentless   energy. 

The  Armenians  were  compelled  to  abandon  the  out- 
lying lines  of  their  defence  and  were  retreating  day 
by  day  into  the  heights  of  Antok,  the  central  block  of 
the  mountains,  some  10,000  feet  high.  The  non-com- 
batant women  and  children  and  their  large  flocks  of 
cattle  greatly  hampered  the  free  movements  of  the 
defenders,  whose  number  had  already  been  reduced 
from  3,000  to  about  half  that  figure.  Terrible  con- 
fusion prevailed  during  the  Turkish  attacks  as  well 
as  the  Armenian  counter  attacks.  Many  of  the  Arme- 
nians smashed  their  rifles  after  firing  the  last  car- 
tridge and  grasped  their  revolvers  and  daggers.  The 
Turkish  regulars  and  Kurds,  amounting  now  to  some- 
thing like  30,000  altogether,  pushed  higher  and  higher 
up  the  heights  and  surrounded  the  main  Armenian 
position  at  close  quarters.  Then  followed  one  of  those 
desperate  and  heroic  struggles  for  life  which  have 
always  been  the  pride  of  mountaineers.  Men,  women, 
and  children  fought  with  knives,  scythes,  stones,  and 
anything  else  they  could  handle.  They  rolled  blocks 
of  stone  down  the  steep  slopes,  killing  many  of  the 
enemy.  In  a  frightful  hand-to-hand  combat,  women 
were  seen  thrusting  their  knives  into  the  throats  of 
Turks  and  thus  accounting  for  many  of  them.  On  the 
5th  of  August,  the  last  day  of  the  fighting,  the  blood- 
stained rocks  of  Antok  were  captured  by  the  Turks. 
The  Armenian  warriors  of  Sassoun,  except  those  who 


120  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

had  worked  round  to  the  rear  of  the  Turks  to  attack 
them  on  their  flanks,  had  died  in  battle/' 

There  is  a  wealth  of  material  concerning 
Van,  which  the  Armenians  held  for  four 
weeks  against  a  German-led  Turkish  army. 
To  defend  themselves,  the  civilians  were 
obliged  to  manufacture  their  own  powder,  to 
construct  their  own  mortars,  and  even  to 
make  their  own  guns.  We  learn  that  they 
succeeded  in  making  from  two  to  four  thou- 
sand cartridges  a  day,  that  "the  blacksmiths 
made  spears  to  be  used  if  necessary  when  the 
ammunition  was  all  gone";  that  they  dug 
trenches  and  underground  passages  through 
which  they  blew  up  Turkish  barracks  and 
entrenchments;  and  that  in  the  very  midst 
of  the  most  furious  bombardments,  the 
Normal  School  band  played  Armenian 
national  airs  and  the  Marseillaise  to  enhearten 
the  fighters! 

"All  the  people  of  Van,  without  excep- 
tion," says  an  eye-witness,  "worked  with  one 
soul.  Those  who  had  arms  and  were  able  to 
fight  rushed  to  take  their  stand  and  stop  the 
Turks  from  entering  the  Armenian  quarters, 


IN   THE   WORLD   WAR  121 

and  those  who  were  able  to  work  took  spade 
and  shovel  to  go  to  strengthen  the  fighting 
men's  positions  by  constructing  trenches  and 
walls.  The  little  boys  worked  as  scouts,  the 
women  and  girls  undertook  the  care  of  the 
sick  and  of  the  children  and  did  all  the  cook- 
ing and  sewing  for  the  fighters. 

"To  save  their  lives  and  honor  all  the 
Armenians  of  Van  had  placed  their  services 
at  the  disposal  of  the  Military  Council,  who 
awarded  crosses  and  medals  to  encourage 
those  who  were  worthy  of  them.  I  was  pres- 
ent when  a  little  girl  received  one  of  these 
medals.  During  the  retaking  of  a  position 
in  Angous  Tzor  she  bravely  went  ahead, 
spied  out  the  ground  and  brought  back  news 
that  the  Turks  had  laid  no  traps  for  the 
advancing  Armenian  soldiers." 

The  actual  fighting  force  of  Van  numbered 
only  1500  men,  but  by  their  skill  and  strategy, 
no  less  than  by  their  valor,  and  with  the  de- 
voted backing  of  the  other  inhabitants,  they 
forced  the  enemy  finally  to  evacuate  their 
positions.  "At  midnight,  on  the  17th  of  May, 
1915,"  says  the  same  eye-witness,  "the  town 
criers  went  through  the  town  crying  *  Victory.' 


122  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

.  .  .  The  whole  city  was  in  an  uproar;  some 
went  to  look  at  the  entrenchments:  others  to 
look  at  the  burned  Turkish  quarters;  and 
others  to  visit  the  fortress,  captured  that 
night,  and  over  which  a  banner  waved, 
bearing  the  symbol  of  the  Cross. 

"Shortly  after,  news  came  that  the  Russian 
army  with  the  Armenian  Volunteers  was  in 
sight.  The  joy  of  the  people  was  boundless; 
tears  of  gladness  and  of  emotion  for  what 
they  had  suffered  during  the  past  month 
rolled  down  their  cheeks  as  they  made  them 
welcome."  They  fired  salvos  from  the  cap- 
tured Turkish  guns  and  "laid  the  keys  of 
the  captured  city  and  Castle  at  the  feet  of  the 
Russian  General.,, 

But  to  the  eternal  infamy  of  the  Czar's 
government,  the  heroic  resistance  of  the 
Van  and  other  Armenians  of  the  region, 
as  well  as  the  valiant  efforts  of  the  Russo- 
Armenian  volunteers,  was  partially  undone 
by  the  mysterious  conduct  of  the  Russian 
army.  The  prospect  of  an  eventual  occupa- 
tion by  Russia  of  the  Armenian  plateau,  as 
arranged  by  a  secret  treaty  between  her  and 


IN   THE   WORLD    WAR  123 

the  other  Powers  of  the  Entente — later 
published  by  the  Bolsheviki — was  evidently 
dictating  a  policy  hostile  to  them.  An  un- 
accountable retreat  was  almost  immediately 
ordered,  which  exposed  the  now  defenseless 
population  either  to  all  the  ravages  of  a  forced 
march  over  the  frontier  or  to  the  mercy  of  the 
oncoming  Turks.  The  obvious  design  was  to 
accomplish  the  depopulation  of  the  country, 
and  thus  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  Russian 
colonization,  which  even  now  was  beginning 
to  take  form  in  the  bands  of  Russian  Cossack 
peasants  who  were  actually  pre-empting 
Armenian  lands.12 

This  shameless  and  terrible  policy  was 
crushing  to  the  spirits  of  the  Armenians  of 
Russia,  as  well  as  to  the  already  agonized 
hearts  of  those  still  on  Turkish  soil.  But 
surrender  was  impossible,  and  they  persisted 
in  their  desperate  struggle  against  the  Turco- 
German  program.  The  fall  of  the  Czar's 
government,  which  in  the  natural  order  of 
things  would  have  been  to  them  a  blessing, 
only  aggravated  and  intensified  their  imme- 
diate peril.  They  had  been  deprived  of  the 
bulk  of  their  own  fighting  men  at  the  be- 


124  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

ginning  of  the  war,  it  will  be  remembered, 
by  transfer  to  the  Western  front,  and  when  the 
Russian  regulars  were  withdrawn,  they  were 
thrown  entirely  upon  their  own  meager 
resources.  The  only  recourse  was  to  organize 
what  resistance  they  could,  in  conjunction 
with  the  Georgians. 

So  early  as  May,  1917,  anticipating  this 
general  demoralization  of  the  Russian  army, 
the  Armenians  had  sent  representatives 
to  Petrograd  to  urge  upon  the  Kerensky 
government  the  speedy  return  of  the  Armenian 
regulars  for  the  defense  of  the  Caucasian 
front.  But  the  government  could  do  little 
for  them.  The  delegates  therefore  formed  in 
Petrograd  a  committee  of  Armenian  military 
men  for  the  purpose  of  finding  ways  and 
means  of  effecting  this  end.  With  all  their 
efforts,  however,  they  succeeded,  in  six 
months,  in  transferring  only  35,000  men. 
These  were  joined  with  volunteers  and  formed 
into  army  corps. 

To  add  to  the  terrors  of  the  situation,  the 
Tartars  rose  in  open  league  with  the  Turks 
and  were  burning  bridges,  cutting  railroad 
communications,  and  attacking  the  Armenians 


IN   THE   WORLD    WAR  125 

from  all  sides.  This  was  an  enormous  handi- 
cap, but  the  Armenians  none  the  less  suc- 
ceeded in  fighting  their  way  through  and 
holding  the  front  against  the  advancing  Turk- 
ish army. 

Then  came  the  Brest-Litovsk  Treaty,  by 
the  stipulations  of  which  part  of  Russian 
Armenia  was  ceded  to  the  Turks!  This  the 
Armenians  had  the  daring  utterly  to  repu- 
diate, and  for  a  time,  with  the  co-operation  of 
the  Georgians,  they  continued  to  resist  the 
Turkish  assault.  Then  the  Georgians  capit- 
ulated, and  the  Armenians  went  on  with  the 
struggle  single-handed,  conducting  them- 
selves so  valiantly  that  as  late  as  July  14, 
1918,  Mr.  Balfour  was  able  to  say  in  the 
British  Parliament:  "We  follow  with  the 
deepest  sympathy  and  admiration  the  brave 
resistance  which  the  Armenians  are  offering 
to  the  Turkish  army."  And  although  the 
Armenians  of  the  Erivan  district  were,  in 
the  language  of  Lord  Robert  Cecil  of  the 
British  Foreign  Office,  "at  length  compelled 
by  main  force  to  suspend  hostilities"  and  come 
to  terms  with  the  foe,  other  Armenians  of  the 
Caucasus,  under  the  leadership  of  Generals 


126  THE   TRAGEDY    OF   ARMENIA 

Andranik,  Nazarbekof,  Pakradooni,  and 
Rostome,  are  continuing  the  fight  to  the 
present  hour. 

And  of  the  Armenians  of  Erivan,  Lord 
Robert  says:  "Great  Britain  and  her  allies 
understand  the  cruel  necessity  which  forced 
them  to  take  that  step,  and  look  forward  to 
the  time,  perhaps  not  far  distant,  when  the 
allied  victories  may  reverse  their  undeserved 
misfortunes";  and  he  acknowledges  their 
services  at  length,  saying,  among  other  things, 
"that  they  had  thrown  themselves  into  the 
breach  which  the  Russian  breakdown  left  open 
in  Asia  by  taking  over  the  Caucasian  front, 
and  for  five  months  delaying  the  Turks' 
advance, — and  that  they  thus  rendered  im- 
portant service  to  the  British  army  in 
Mesopotamia" 

While  these  sublime  actors  were  playing 
this  immensely  significant  part,  unsustained 
by  the  help  or  fellowship  of  their  European 
comrades  at  arms,  and  scarcely  knowing  what 
the  Fates,  even  in  the  event  of  victory,  would 
have  in  store  for  them,  but  resting  ever  on 
their  abiding  faith  in  Ultimate  Justice,  other 
Armenians,  of  the  Dispersion,  were  fighting 


IN   THE    WORLD    WAR  127 

with  the  Allied  forces  in  the  Foreign  Legion 
of  France,  with  the  English  in  Palestine  and 
Mesopotamia,  and  in  the  United  States  army. 
And  the  civilian  Armenians,  men  and  women, 
were  doing  all  in  their  power,  as  doctors, 
nurses,  engineers,  Red  Cross,  and  Liberty 
Loan  workers,  to  help  on  the  general  cause  of 
human  freedom.  The  welcome  and  encour- 
agement which  these  received  from  the  Allied 
governments  brought  new  life  to  their  lacer- 
ated but  undying  hope  of  an  emancipated 
Armenia — a  hope  which  became  assurance 
when  America,  taking  the  sword,  announced 
for  all  mankind  the  new  international 
Apocalypse : 

"but  the  right  is  more  precious  than 
peace,  and  we  shall  fight  for  the  things 
which  we  have  always  carried  nearest 
our  hearts — for  democracy,  for  the  right 
of  those  who  submit  to  authority  to  have 
a  voice  in  their  own  government,  for  the 
rights  and  liberties  of  small  nations,  for 
a  universal  dominion  of  right  by  such  a 
concert  of  free  peoples  as  shall  bring 
peace  and  safety  to  all  nations  and  make 
the  world  itself  at  last  free." 


Chapter  VII 

IN  THE  WORLD  COURT 

"TTTHEN  Tamerlane  arrived  before 
Y  Y  Sivas,"  we  are  told,  "the  pearl  of 
Armenia,  thousands  of  children  met 
him  with  garlands  of  roses.  He  had  both  the 
children  and  the  roses  crushed  under  the  hoofs 
of  his  horses."  And  on  the  neighboring  plain, 
—called  to  this  day  "The  Black  Field;'— he 
erected  one  of  his  huge  pyramids  of  skulls. 
This  was  in  the  fourteenth  century. 

In  1915,  the  descendants  of  Tamerlane,  in 
union  with  the  Government  of  Germany,  were 
responsible  for  crimes  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  Turkish  Empire,  before  the 
magnitude,  the  cruel  finesse,  the  "cold  com- 
manded lust"  of  which  even  the  horrors  of 
their  ancient  prototype  pale.  Of  this  the 
testimony  of  Signor  Gorrini,  Italian  Consul- 
General  at  Trebizond,  published  in  the  journal 
"II  Messaggero"  of  Rome,  August  25,  1915, 
and  republished  in  the  English  Blue  Book, 


IN.THE    WORLD   COURT  129 

concerning   the    fate    of   the   Armenians    of 
Trebizond  alone  would  serve  as  ample  proof:13 

"It  was  a  real  extermination  and  slaughter  of  the 
innocents,"  he  says,  "an  unheard-of  thing,  a  black  page 
stained  with  the  flagrant  violation  of  the  most  sacred 
rights  of  humanity,  of  Christianity,  of  nationality. 
The  Armenian  Catholics,  too,  who  in  the  past  had 
always  been  respected  and  excepted  from  the  massacres 
and  persecutions,  were  this  time  treated  worse  than 
any — again  by  the  orders  of  the  Central  Government. 
There  were  about  14,000  Armenians  at  Trebizond — 
Gregorians,  Catholics,  and  Protestants.  They  had 
never  caused  disorders  or  given  occasion  for  collective 
measures  of  police.  When  I  left  Trebizond,  not  a 
hundred  of  them  remained. 

"From  the  24th  of  June,  the  date  of  the  publication 
of  the  infamous  decree,  until  the  23rd  of  July,  the  date 
of  my  own  departure  from  Trebizond,  I  no  longer  slept 
or  ate;  I  was  given  over  to  nerves  and  nausea,  so 
terrible  was  the  torment  of  having  to  look  on  at  the 
wholesale  execution  of  these  defenceless,  innocent 
creatures. 

"The  passing  of  the  gangs  of  Armenian  exiles  beneath 
the  windows  and  before  the  door  of  the  Consulate;  their 
prayers  for  help,  when  neither  I  nor  any  other  could 
do  anything  to  answer  them ;  the  city  in  a  state  of  siege, 
guarded  at  every  point  by  15,000  troops  in  complete  war 
equipment,  by  thousands  of  police  agents,  by  bands  of 
volunteers  and  by  the  members  of  the  'Committee  of 


130  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

Union  and  Progress';  the  lamentations,  the  tears,  the 
abandonments,  the  imprecations,  the  many  suicides, 
the  instantaneous  deaths  from  sheer  terror,  the  sudden 
unhinging  of  men's  reason,  the  conflagrations,  the 
shooting  of  victims  in  the  city,  the  ruthless  searches 
through  the  houses  and  in  the  countryside ;  the  hundreds 
of  corpses  found  every  day  along  the  exile  road;  the 
young  women  converted  by  force  to  Islam  or  exiled 
like  the  rest;  the  children  torn  away  from  their  families 
or  from  the  Christian  schools,  and  handed  over  by  force 
to  Moslem  families,  or  else  placed  by  hundreds  on  board 
ship  in  nothing  but  their  shirts,  and  then  capsized  and 
drowned  in  the  Black  Sea  and  the  River  Deyirmen  Dere 
— these  are  my  last  ineffaceable  memories  of  Trebizond, 
memories  which  still,  at  a  month's  distance,  torment 
my  soul  and  almost  drive  me  frantic.  When  one  has 
had  to  look  on  for  a  whole  month  at  such  horrors,  at 
such  protracted  tortures,  with  absolutely  no  power  of 
acting  as  one  longed  to  act,  the  question  naturally  and 
spontaneously  suggests  itself,  whether  all  the  cannibals 
and  all  the  wild  beasts  in  the  world  have  not  left  their 
hiding  places  and  retreats,  left  the  virgin  forests  of 
Africa,  Asia,  America,  and  Oceanica,  to  make  their 
rendezvous  at  Stamboul.  I  should  prefer  to  close  our 
interview  at  this  point,  with  the  solemn  asseveration 
that  this  black  page  in  Turkey's  history  calls  for  the 
most  uncompromising  reproach  and  for  the  vengeance 
of  all  Christendom.  If  they  knew  all  the  things  that 
I  know,  all  that  I  have  had  to  see  with  my  eyes  and 
hear  with  my  ears,  all  Christian  powers  that  are  still 


IN   THE    WORLD    COURT  131 

neutral  would  be  impelled  to  rise  up  against  Turkey 
and  cry  anathema  against  her  inhuman  Government  and 
her  ferocious  'Committee  of  Union  and  Progress/ 
and  they  would  extend  the  responsibility  to  Turkey's 
Allies,  who  tolerate  or  even  shield  with  their  strong 
arm  these  execrable  crimes,  which  have  not  their  equal 
in  history,  either  modern  or  ancient.  Shame,  horror 
and  disgrace!" 

For  almost  six  centuries  Armenia  has  been 
compelled  to  sacrifice  her  children  and  her 
roses — her  flesh  and  blood,  her  culture,  and 
the  fruits  of  her  toil — to  an  insatiable  Moloch 
of  savagery  and  greed,  and  to  the  later  years 
of  this  ordeal  by  blood  and  fire  the  great 
outside  world  has  remained,  we  must  repeat, 
a  passive  spectator.  One  of  these  mass- 
sacrifices  was  exacted,  as  we  know,  so  short 
a  time  before  the  war  as  the  year  1909,  when 
20,000  persons  were  massacred  at  Adana  and 
in  its  environs.  But  not  a  movement  was 
made  to  arrest  the  holocaust.  Other  gods,  in 
addition  to  those  of  Turkey,  required  then 
their  blood  oblations.  Now,  however,  the 
vengeance  which  follows  violated  moral  law 
has  finally  overtaken  all  the  world  and,  in  the 
vision  born  of  agony  and  remorse,  the  world 


132  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

will  now  make  to  Armenia  what  amends  it 
can. 

And  what  are  these  amends?  In  a  word, 
they  are  the  restoration  to  the  Armenian 
people  of  their  ancient  fatherland  where,  in 
the  free  exercise  of  their  genius  and  devotion, 
they  may  have  the  opportunity  of  building  a 
state  which  shall  be  worthy  of  the  sacrifices 
they  have  immemorially  made  for  the  sake  of 
religion,  nationality,  progress  and  freedom. 
We  cannot  give  them  back  their  dead.  But 
we  can  and  must  make  this  belated  act  of 
reparation.  It  is  America's  and  the  Allies' 
sacred  promise  that  justice  shall  at  length  be 
done  to  the  small  nationalities.  And  to  what 
people  does  the  world  owe  more  than  to  this, 
which  veritably  has  been  sacrificed  for  the 
sins  of  the  world? 

The  solution  commends  itself  even  on  other 
grounds  than  the  all-sufficing  one  of  justice. 
If  not  to  the  Armenians,  to  whom  should  we 
grant  their  ancient  patrimony?  What  other 
race  installed  in  this  region,  on  the  borderland 
of  East  and  West,  would  serve  world  needs 
so  well  as  they, — they  who  have  been  re- 
peatedly  called   the    "natural   intermediaries 


IN   THE    WORLD    COURT  133 

between  Orient  and  Occident";  they  whose 
administrative  ability  has  already  been  so 
amply  demonstrated  in  the  number  of  states- 
men they  have  given  to  the  world,  and  whose 
industrial  and  commercial  abilities,  whose 
sobriety  and  perseverance,  are  matters  of 
common  knowledge.  Even  in  modern  days, 
have  they  not  filled  high  administrative  posts 
in  the  service  of  the  British  Empire,  of  Russia, 
Turkey,  and  Persia?  It  is  acknowledged  that 
England's  success  in  governing  Egypt  is 
largely  traceable  to  the  genius  of  Nubar 
Pasha  who,  both  because  of  his  personal  gifts 
and  his  Armenian  origin,  was  able  sympa- 
thetically to  interpret  the  needs  of  both  East 
and  West,  and  to  whom,  upon  his  death,  the 
Mohammedans  and  Christians  of  Egypt 
united  to  erect  a  monument.  As  ministers  of 
public  instruction,  as  prime  ministers,  as 
ambassadors  and  as  all  kinds  of  lesser  officials, 
they  have  figured  successfully  in  the  political 
life  of  all  these  countries.  And  as  for  the 
question  of  national  defence,  what  race  is 
better  able  to  defend  order  than  this  which 
has  proved  itself  the  bravest  of  the  brave  and 
which,  under  Russia,  has  never  been  without 


134  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

its  distinguished  warriors,  from  the  days  of 
the  general,  Prince  Pagratian,  who  was  "the 
opponent  of  Napoleon  in  1812,"  down  to 
those  of  General  Samsonoff  who  died  on  the 
Poland  front  in  the  present  war  "trying  to 
relieve  the  strain  on  Paris,"  and  General 
Andranik  and  his  colleagues,  last  in  the 
defence  of  the  Caucasian  front.  The  fact 
that  the  Turks,  by  resorting  to  the  device 
of  keeping  them  unarmed  throughout  the 
centuries,  were  able  to  murder  them  at  will 
is  merely  a  proof  of  Turkish  cowardice. 
Whenever  they  were  known  to  possess  arms 
they  were  generally  avoided  by  both  Turks 
and  Kurds.  In  the  Caucasus,  Russia  has 
depended  very  largely  upon  them  in  the  main- 
tenance of  order.  It  was  they  who  con- 
stituted, to  a  great  extent,  the  gendarmerie. 

Moreover,  if  not  in  a  free  Armenia,  where 
then  shall  we  place  this  race?  It  is  not  to  be 
thought  for  a  moment  that  we  shall  expect 
them  to  live  again  under  some  Turkish 
hegemony.  To  expect  them  to  submit  to  the 
authority  of  the  would-be  annihilators  of  their 
nation  would  be  to  do  a  fundamental  violence 
to  the  moral  nature  of  all  mankind.    It  would 


IN   THE   WORLD    COURT  135 

signify  a  return  to  that  hideous  pre-war 
morality,  in  which  fair  was  so  often  foul  and 
foul  was  so  often  fair.  Even  before  the  con- 
clusion of  hostilities  the  world  has  fully  made 
up  its  mind  upon  this  point.  The  merits  and 
claims  both  of  the  Armenians  and  of  the 
Turks  it  has  already  clearly  defined.  The  ver- 
dict of  Mr.  William  T.  Stead  that  the  Turk 
is  but  "a  barbarian  encamped  upon  the 
ashes  of  the  civilizations  which  he  destroyed,,, 
is  only  one  echo  from  the  chorus  of  classic 
and  contemporary  British  and  Latin  opinion, 
while  Heinrich  von  Treitschke's  view  may 
suggest  even  to  defeated  Germany  the  un- 
desirability  of  further  alliance  with,  or 
support  of,  this  monstrous  and  anachronistic 
rule.  "A  near  future,"  he  writes,  "will,  it  is 
to  be  hoped,  blot  out  the  scandal  that  such 
heathendom  should  ever  have  established  itself 
on  European  soil.  What  has  this  Turkish 
Empire  done  in  three  entire  centuries?  It 
has  done  nothing  but  destroy." 

For  an  American  judgment  with  regard 
to  Turkey's  past  and  future,  we  may  turn  to 
the  words  of  Mr.  Henry  Morgenthau,  recent 
American  ambassador  to  Constantinople,  who 


136  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

was  witness  to  the  evil  power  of  the  Turk  as 
it  displayed  itself  in  the  terrible  year  of  1915. 

"After  450  years  of  misrule,"  Mr.  Morgen- 
thau  says,  "the  Turks  at  last  are  going  to  be 
deprived  of  their  domination  over  the  Chris- 
tian, Jewish,  and  Arabian  population  of 
Turkey.  There  must  be  no  maudlin  senti- 
ment or  emotional  sympathy  about  their 
treatment.  They  stand  convicted  of  whole- 
sale murder  in  the  first  degree,  of  committing 
the  most  atrocious  crimes  and  beastly  tortures 
of  the  ages;  of  maintaining  an  unjust  and 
incompetent  government. 

"They  have  demonstrated  their  absolute 
inability  to  govern  either  themselves  or  the 
nations  that  they  have  conquered. 

"They  have  never  assimilated  the  peoples 
whose  territory  they  have  overrun. 

"They  have  lived  all  these  years  as  para- 
sites, maintaining  their  power  by  brute 
strength. 

"They  have  really  given  nothing  to  these 
countries,  no  architecture,  no  literature,  no  art, 
no  progress  of  any  kind. 

"They  have  sapped  the  life-blood  and  the 
energy  of  the  occupants  of  these  lands. 


IN   THE   WORLD   COURT  137 

"They  have  deprived  the  people  of  security 
of  life  and  property,  thereby  taking  away  all 
incentives  to  any  unusual  energy  or  to  the 
keeping  in  line  with  the  progress  of  the  time. 

"In  fact  they  have  cowed  the  people  into 
a  condition  of  rebellious  though  subdued  sub- 
mission. They  have  ruled  by  might  and  fear 
and  not  by  right  and  love.  .  .  .  They  have 
deprived  themselves  of  the  best  part  of  their 
population.  They  have  robbed,  pillaged  and 
murdered  as  only  the  most  conscienceless 
brood  of  barbarians  could  do." 

On  the  other  hand  there  is  the  record  of 
Armenia,  a  record,  in  the  words  of  the 
French  writer,  M.  Emile  Pignot,  of  "an  entire 
people  bruised  by  the  heaviest  chains,  lacerated 
by  the  most  oppressive  yoke,  yet  standing 
unbowed  in  the  face  of  all  sufferings,  of  all 
tyrannies,  of  all  betrayal,  of  all  infamies, 
erect  upon  all  the  Golgothas  of  torture,  and 
proclaiming  to  the  world  the  invincibility  of 
its  soul," — a  race  whose  "leaders  have  fallen 
in  order  that  from  their  closed  eyes  might 
shine  more  clearly,  more  luminously,  and  more 
imperishably,  the  light  of  their  national 
genius";  a  race  described  by  M,  Deschanel, 


138  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

President  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  and 
Member  of  the  Academy,  as  having  been  able 
"even  in  the  shadow  of  its  slavery,"  to  guard 
"the  secret  spring  of  letters,  of  the  arts,  and 
of  liberty  of  conscience" ;  a  race  characterized 
by  the  Honorable  Andrew  D.  White,  former 
Ambassador  to  Germany  and  President  of 
Cornell  University,  as  "one  of  the  finest 
races  in  the  world,  physically,  morally  and 
intellectually";  by  Viscount  Bryce  as  "of 
conspicuous  brain  power,  with  a  capacity  for 
intellectual  and  moral  progress,  as  well  as  with 
a  natural  tenacity  of  will  and  purpose,  beyond 
that  of  all  their  neighbors";  and  by  Dr.  James 
L.  Barton,  Secretary  of  the  American  Board 
of  Foreign  Missions  and  for  eight  years 
President  of  Euphrates  College,  as  "religious, 
industrious  and  faithful,  .  .  .  not  inferior  in 
mental  ability  to  any  race  on  earth." 

If  the  future  of  Armenia  were  sure  to  be 
settled  solely  upon  the  shining  merit  of  the 
Armenian  cause,  or  by  the  universally  approv- 
ing testimony  of  the  eminent  men  and  women 
of  all  races  who  have  loved  and  defended  it, 
this  little  nation  would  scarcely  need  to  present 
its  claims  before  the  World  Court.     But  in 


IN    THE    WORLD    COURT  139 

that  case  neither  would  justice  have  been  so 
long,  so  disgracefully,,  and  so  disastrously- 
delayed.  Both  the  history  of  the  Near  East 
and  the  fact  of  the  present  war  which  has 
ensued  in  large  degree  as  a  consequence  of 
this  question,  have  revealed  to  us  the  depths 
to  which  men  are  capable  of  descending  in  the 
scramble  for  territory  and  power;  and  they 
suggest  the  necessity  of  our  being  upon  our 
guard  against  the  apologists  for  evil  who,  in 
one  form  or  another,  are  certain  to  make 
themselves  heard  at  the  final  settlement. 

With  regard  to  the  dangers  inherent  in  the 
Turkish  situation  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  quote 
a  statement  made  by  Mr.  Samuel  S.  McClure 
in  his  Obstacles  to  Peace;  "However  difficult 
the  various  questions  involved  in  the  peace 
settlement,"  he  writes, — "and  no  one  can  ex- 
aggerate the  almost  insoluble  questions — the 
real  problem  of  the  war  is  Asiatic  Turkey. 
The  settlement  of  this  question  may  involve 
a  continuous  series  of  devastating  wars  at 
longer  or  shorter  intervals  for  generations." 

This  was  written  in  1916,  when  the  world 
situation  wore  a  different  aspect  from  that  of 
today.    The  Russian  Revolution  had  not  then 


140  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ARMENIA 

occurred  and  America  had  not  entered  the 
war,  and  there  was  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
the  partition  of  Turkey,  along  traditional 
lines,  among  the  victorious  European  powers 
would  not  follow  the  cessation  of  hostilities. 
But  even  today  in  a  world  made  new  by  these 
events,  Mr.  McClure's  statement  still  stands 
in  the  opinion  of  all  who  are  giving  thought 
to  the  issues  of  that  decisive  battle  of  the 
World  War  which  we  are  in  the  habit  of 
naming  the  Peace  Congress.  The  Turkish 
Empire  still  presents  possibilities  for  rivalry 
and  discord  which  are  not  common  to  the  other 
countries  the  destinies  of  which  are  now  a 
matter  of  world  debate.  Mr.  McClure's  words 
are  more  than  a  statement  of  generally  recog- 
nized truth.  They  are  a  solemn  warning. 
They  suggest  the  imperative  necessity  for  a 
determined  pre-Peace  Congress  educational 
propaganda  which  shall  eliminate  the  possi- 
bility of  any  such  settlement  as  might  lead  to 
future  disaster. 

We  are  all  fully  aware  of  the  extent  to 
which  Turkey,  both  because  of  her  criminal 
character  and  her  central  geographical  posi- 
tion, has  already  figured  not  only  in  this  but 


IN   THE    WORLD    COURT  141 

in  numbers  of  other  wars  which  have  em- 
broiled Europe.  Should  she  again  be  the 
occasion  or  the  means  of  precipitating  another 
general  war,  it  would  probably  mean  the 
destruction  of  Western  civilization,  for,  as  the 
great  historian  Ferrera  has  recently  said,  we 
could  not  survive  another  such  catastrophe. 
To  attempt  to  solve  this  outstanding  problem 
upon  the  old  lines  of  expediency  and  com- 
promise would  be  to  point  the  sword  at  the 
very  heart  of  Europe  and  America. 

The  drama  which  I  have  attempted  swiftly 
to  trace  in  the  foregoing  sketch  is  destined 
therefore  to  have  a  tremendous  epilogue,  since 
upon  the  solution  of  this  central  problem  may 
be  said  to  depend  the  fate  not  only  of  our 
chief  protagonists  but  of  the  entire  world. 
Hence  this  people  become  once  more  the 
moral  arbiters,  as  it  were,  of  a  universal  des- 
tiny; the  token  by  which  shall  be  registered 
the  triumph  either  of  Democracy  or  Autoc- 
racy, our  victory  or  our  defeat. 

In  the  imperial  and  economic  point  of  view 
of  the  baser  elements  of  Europe  as  well  as  in 
that  of  the  Turkish  despotism,  the  region  so 


142  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

recently  contested  for  will  still  be  an  object 
of  extreme  covetousness.  And  by  evidence 
already  at  hand  we  may  anticipate  the  battle 
which  these  factors  will  wage  on  their  own 
behalf.  Claims  will  be  put  forward  both  in 
the  interests  of  the  present  ruling  race  and 
of  the  foreign  imperialists  and  exploiters; 
and  in  case  it  seems  better  to  serve  these 
designs,  Turkey  may  be  cited  as  calling  for 
quite  another  solution  from  that  which  should 
be  applied  to  other  disintegrating  empires — 
Russia  or  Austria  for  example;  and  Turkey- 
in-Europe,  as  requiring  settlement  by  a  code 
different  from  that  demanded  by  conditions 
in  Turkey-in-Asia.  We  are  concerned  only 
with  the  solution  based  upon  the  grounds  of 
absolute  justice  which  alone,  we  hope,  the 
peoples  of  the  world  will  tolerate.  And  for 
guidance  we  can  do  no  better  than  to  turn 
to  Gladstone,  that  prophet  of  the  Near 
Eastern  question  whose  noble  and  inspired 
warnings  Europe  ignored,  to  humanity's  in- 
estimable cost.  Mr.  Gladstone  is  discussing 
this  same  issue  as  it  presented  itself  following 
the  Treaty  of  Berlin: 

"My  meaning,   Sir,"   he   says,   "was  that, 


IN   THE    WORLD    COURT  143 

for  one,  I  utterly  repelled  the  doctrine  that 
the  power  of  Turkey  is  to  be  dragged  to  the 
ground  for  the  purpose  of  handing  over  the 
Dominion  that  Turkey  now  exercises  to  some 
other  great  State,  be  that  State  either  Russia 
or  Austria  or  even  England.  In  my  opinion 
such  a  view  is  utterly  false,  and  even  ruinous, 
and  has  been  the  source  of  the  main  difficulties 
in  which  the  Government  have  been  involved, 
and  in  which  they  have  involved  the  country. 
I  hold  that  those  provinces  of  the  Turkish 
Empire,  which  have  been  so  cruelly  and  un- 
justly ruled,  ought  to  be  regarded  as  existing, 
not  for  the  sake  of  any  other  Power  whatever 
but  for  the  sake  of  the  populations  by  whom 
they  are  inhabited.  The  object  of  our  desire 
ought  to  be  the  development  of  those  popula- 
tions on  their  own  soil,  as  its  proper  masters, 
and  as  the  persons  with  a  view  to  whose  wel- 
fare its  destination  ought  to  be  determined." 
This  point  of  view  is,  of  course,  none  other 
than  the  one  to  which  both  the  Allies  and 
America  have  solemnly  committed  themselves. 
It  is  simply  another  lamp,  a  glorious  one 
from  the  Past,  to  show  the  way.  If  this 
majestic  estate  called  the  Turkish  Empire  is 


144  THE   TRAGEDY   OF  ^ARMENIA 

to  be  rescued  permanently  from  the  despoiler 
and  the  conquest  seeker,  it  will  be  because  a 
settlement  has  been  found  adapted  to  the  just 
and  legitimate  interests  of  all  the  native 
populations,  Armenian,  Syrian,  Greek,  Arab, 
Jew,  and  even  Turk.  What  form  this  general 
and  complicated  settlement  may  take  is  not 
here  a  matter  under  speculation.  But  the 
solution  called  for  by  the  Armenian  claims  is 
fortunately  not  so  indefinite  or  so  involved  as 
to  prohibit  prophecy.  While  it  may  be  true 
that,  as  Mr.  Arnold  Toynbee  has  said,  the 
frontiers  of  the  future  Armenian  state  "cannot 
be  forecast,  they  must  include  the  Six  Vilayets 
— so  often  promised  reforms  by  the  Concert 
of  Europe  and  so  often  abandoned  to  the 
revenges  of  the  Ottoman  Government — as 
well  as  the  Cilician  highlands  and  some  outlet 
to  the  sea."  To  these  provinces  will  naturally 
be  added  the  Armenian  territory  acquired  by 
Russia. 

The  question  as  to  whether  there  are  still 
enough  survivors  to  populate  such  a  state  can 
most  fortunately,  in  spite  of  the  repeated 
attempts  at  national  annihilation,  be  answered 
in  the  affirmative.     It  will  not  be  necessary 


IN   THE   WORLD   COURT  145 

for  us  to  lean  wholly  upon  the  noble 
suggestion  offered  by  M.  Paul  Doumer,  late 
President  of  the  French  Senate,  who  recently 
said  that  should  lack  of  numbers  be  urged  by 
the  enemy  as  an  obstacle  to  an  independent 
Armenian  state  "the  dead  must  be  counted 
with  the  living."  The  paucity  of  numbers  is 
not  so  dire  as  to  endanger  in  any  way 
the  Armenian  hope.  When  Greece  finally 
achieved  her  liberation  from  the  Turkish  yoke 
her  numbers  had  been  reduced  to  about 
500,000,  and  Serbia  and  Bulgaria  were  equally 
decimated  when  they  achieved  theirs;  and  yet 
these  states  have  stood  and  their  populations 
have  multiplied.  Armenia,  with  the  Russian 
provinces,  with  Persia,  and  with  the  Disper- 
sion to  draw  upon,  together  with  the  refugees 
in  the  Caucasus,  Mesopotamia,  Egypt  and 
Palestine,  and  the  Armenians  of  Constanti- 
nople and  Smyrna,  who  have  in  general  been 
spared,  is  numerically  in  a  stronger  position 
than  were  any  of  the  Balkan  states.  To  de- 
fraud the  Armenians  of  their  independence 
because  of  the  losses  they  have  sustained,  or 
for  any  other  reason,  would  be  not  only  to 
commit  a  monstrous  outrage,  but  actually  to 


146  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

accomplish  the  very  end  designed  by  their 
arch  enemies, — to  drain  the  brimming  cup  of 
their  long  sacrifice  in  company  with  these 
criminals.  This  the  world  will  never  consent 
to  do,  and  it  is  with  a  high  hope  of  a  just  and 
complete  deliverance  that  Armenia  will  pre- 
sent herself  at  the  World  Court. 

It  will  not  be  the  first  time  that  this  Figure 
has  presented  itself  before  an  International 
Congress.  But  whereas  in  the  past  she  came 
as  an  unknown  supplicator,  as  an  alien 
champion  of  a  long  forgotten  cause — still  in 
her  quaint  Crusader's  dress — to  throw  herself, 
alas,  in  vain,  upon  the  chivalry  of  the  Great 
Powers,  her  sisters  in  religion  and  race;  one 
marvels  to  record,  that  tomorrow  she  will 
come,  her  unsurrendered  cross  still  upon  her 
breast,  as  defender-at-arms  of  the  victorious 
cause  of  World  Democracy, — its  last  defender 
at  the  farthest  outpost  of  the  field  of  war  in 
that  long  embattled  region:  a  mysterious  figure 
still,  like  one  risen  from  the  dead:  a  nation 
without  a  state,  without  navy,  and  even  with- 
out army  in  the  ordinary  sense,  a  nation  whose 
banner  is  scarcely  known  to  any  but  her  own 


IN   THE    WORLD    COURT  147 

children;  and  yet  the  nation  which,  in  propor- 
tion to  numbers  and  resources,  has  paid  the 
highest  impost  of  life  and  treasure  in  the  whole 
gigantic  conflict.  But  for  all  the  heroism  of 
her  gallant,  her  exalted  sons  and  daughters 
she  will  wear  no  sword.  In  her  right  hand 
there  will  be  a  higher  symbol  of  her  might — 
the  palm  of  her  long  martyrdom. 

Will  the  nations  assembled  there  understand 
the  full  significance  of  this  sublime  Figure  as 
she  makes  her  plea  for  justice?  Will  they 
defend  her  from  the  Powers  of  Chaos  and 
Darkness  which  have  sought  to  destroy  her 
in  their  rapacious  desire  to  possess  themselves 
of  her  inheritance?  Will  they  uphold  the 
spiritual  verities  of  which  she  is  the  symbol, 
and  in  the  perfect  triumph  of  which  alone  lies 
the  peace  and  safety  of  the  world? 

Armenia  will  seek  no  crown  or  sceptre,  nor 
will  there  be  in  her  eyes  the  fire  of  revenge 
or  lust  for  conquest.  As  throughout  her  his- 
tory, so  will  she  still  aspire  for  freedom,  for 
culture,  for  progress  and  for  peace, — for  all 
that  man  holds  good.  The  nations  of  the 
world,  assembled  in  that  great  Council,  will 
surely  at  last  understand  the  grandeur,  the 


148  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

pity  and  the  meaning  of  her  sacrifice,  and  by 
setting  the  seal  of  their  approval  upon  her 
aspirations  for  democracy  and  light,  they  will 
indeed  pay  grateful  tribute  to  the  memory  of 
her  martyrs  and  bear  testimony  to  their  faith 
in  the  ideals  for  which  those  martyrs  died. 


NOTES 

Note  1 

The  Aryan  origin  of  the  Armenian  race  is  recognized 
by  all  authorities.  We  are  indebted  to  Herodotus  for 
the  specific  story  of  their  former  connection  with  Europe. 
He  says  that  the  Armenians  are  a  branch  of  the 
Phrygians.  The  Phrygians,  according  to  tradition, 
before  their  migration  to  Asia  lived  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Macedonia.  Strabo  makes  a  statement  which  sug- 
gests an  even  more  picturesque  origin  when  he  says  that 
Armen,  a  native  of  Armenion,  a  city  of  Thessaly,  sailed 
in  company  with  Jason  toward  the  country  afterwards 
named  for  him.  Rawlinson  seems  to  be  the  only  author- 
ity who  does  not  trace  the  Armenians  to  Europe.  His 
theory  is  that  Armenia  itself  was  the  original  home  of 
the  Aryan  peoples.  The  foundation  for  their  own 
tradition  that  they  are  descendants  of  Thorkom,  or 
Togarmah,  a  grandson  of  Japhet,  may,  for  want  of 
historical  evidence,  remain  forever  merely  a  matter  for 
interesting  speculation. 

Note  2 

In  one  of  the  earlier  chapters  of  "The  Beginnings  of 
New  England,"  Mr.  Fiske,  speaking  of  "the  first  bold 
and  determined  manifestation  of  the  Protestant  temper 
of  revolt  against  spiritual  despotism,"  says: 

"From  Armenia  in  the  ninth  century  the  Manichnpan 


150  THE    TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

sect  of  Paulicians  came  into  Thrace  and  for  twenty 
generations  played  a  considerable  part  in  the  history 
of  the  Eastern  Empire.  They  were  known  in  Bulgaria 
as  Bogomiles.  In  the  Greek  tongue  they  were  called 
Cathari,  or  'Puritans.'  .  .  . 

"Their  ecclesiastical  government  was  in  the  main 
Presbyterian,  and  in  politics  they  showed  a  decided 
leaning  toward  democracy.  They  wore  long  faces, 
looked  askance  at  frivolous  amusements,  and  were 
terribly  in  earnest.  Of  the  more  obscure  pages  of 
mediaeval  history,  none  are  fuller  of  interest  than  those 
in  which  we  decipher  the  westward  progress  of  these 
sturdy  heretics,  through  the  Balkan  peninsula  into  Italy, 
and  thence  into  Southern  France,  where,  toward  the 
end  of  the  twelfth  century,  we  find  their  ideas  coming 
to  full  bloom  in  the  great  Albigensian  heresy.  .  .  . 
After  forty  years  of  slaughter,  these  Albigensian 
Cathari  or  Puritans  seemed  exterminated,  but  the  spirit 
of  revolt  against  the  hierarchy  continued  to  live  on 
obscurely,  ready  on  occasion  to  spring  into  fresh  and 
vigorous  life.  .  .  .  This  Protestant  reformation,  from 
the  thirteenth  century  to  the  nineteenth,  is  coincident 
with  the  transfer  of  the  world's  political  center  of 
gravity  from  the  Tiber  and  Rhine  to  the  Thames  and  the 
Mississippi." 

Referring  to  Armenian  Protestantism,  the  late  Dr. 
Robert  Chambers  of  Western  Turkey  Mission,  writing 
in  the  Missionary  Herald  makes  the  following  inter- 
esting statement:  "Some  of  the  first  to  discover  and 
attach  themselves  to  the  American  missionaries  in  the 


NOTES  151 

early  part  of  the  last  century  in  Armenia  were  descen- 
dants of  the  Armenian  Paulicians." 

Note  3 
Research  on  Armenian  art  is  still  in  its  infancy.  Even 
the  manuscript  literature  has  not  yet  been  fully  studied. 
Of  the  art  of  illuminating,  which  advanced  to  a  high 
degree  of  skill  and  beauty  in  the  Middle  Ages,  we  know 
comparatively  little,  although  it  is  beginning  to  be  made 
the  object  of  special  study  by  certain  modern  scholars. 
The  gold  and  silversmiths'  art,  said  to  have  attained  its 
height  in  the  tenth  century,  has  continued  to  find 
fascinating  and  original  expression  even  to  recent  days. 
I  have  seen  an  exquisite  silver  handleless  cup,  made  by 
an  artisan  of  the  city  of  Van,  famous  for  its  silver- 
smiths, which  exhibited  evidence  of  marked  genius.  It 
was  covered  with  very  chaste,  minute,  and  delicately 
wrought  geometric  designs.  In  the  center,  supported  by 
a  pivot,  was  a  fish,  covered  with  carven  scales  and  very 
flexible,  which,  when  the  cup  was  filled  with  liquid, 
seemed  to  swim.  A  very  suggestive  article  upon  the 
subject  of  Armenian  decorative  art  may  be  found  in 
the  International  Encyclopedia. 

Note  4 
With  regard  to  the  physique  of  the  Armenians  we  have 
much  enlightening  testimony  from  persons  who  have 
traveled  and  lived  among  them.  The  veteran  missionary, 
Dr.  Joseph  K.  Greene,  author  of  "Leavening  the 
Levant,"  attributes  their  survival  as  a  people  to  their 
physical,  no  less  than  to  their  moral  vigor: 


152  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

"The  first  reason  of  their  survival/'  he  says,  "is  that 
the  Armenians  inhabited,  not  the  hot  and  feverish  plains 
of  Mesopotamia  but  the  broad  and  elevated  plateau  of 
northeastern  Asia  Minor.  Even  as  far  south  as  Van, 
their  ancient  capital,  their  country  was  5,500  feet  above 
sea  level,  with  the  snow-capped  peak  of  Ararat  only 
one  hundred  miles  to  the  northeast.  Like  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  Caucasus — the  Circassians — they  were  a 
ruddy,  vigorous,  healthy  race.  Their  land  was  fertile 
and  produced  fine  cereals  and  fruits,  with  abounding 
flocks  and  herds.  Theirs  was  a  life  of  toil,  a  perpetual 
fight  with  nature,  but  they  breathed  pure  air  and  were 
well  fed.  Hence  the  Armenians  were  a  hardy  and 
handsome  race,  and  were  capable  of  great  endurance." 

Even  when  subjected  to  the  trials  of  migration,  they 
continue  to  preserve  their  aspect  of  physical  well  being. 
Some  twelve  or  more  years  ago,  I  heard  that  veteran 
orator,  the  late  Mary  A.  Livermore,  open  an  address 
to  an  audience  of  Armenians  assembled  in  Faneuil  Hall, 
Boston,  with  the  following  striking  but  very  seriously 
spoken  words:  "This  is  the  handsomest  audience  I  have 
ever  stood  before."  I  myself  have  never  addressed  an 
Armenian  audience  without  receiving  an  impression  of 
their  morally  illuminated  vitality.  And  frequently  after 
lectures  to  American  audiences,  school  teachers  have 
come  up  to  me  to  express  both  their  admiration  and  love 
for  the  beautiful  Armenian  children  in  their  care,  and 
their  indignation  that  such  splendid  human  material 
should  be  so  recklessly  wasted. 


NOTES  153 

Note  5 
I  cannot  let  the  occasion  pass  without  paying  my 
personal  tribute  to  the  really  chivalrous  men  and  women 
in  Europe  and  America  who  have  consecrated  them- 
selves to  the  Armenian  cause.  The  names  of  Gladstone, 
Bryce,  Dillon,  Lynch,  Zangwill,  MacColl,  the  Duke 
of  Argyle,  Hamlin,  Christie,  Greene,  Chambers,  Bar- 
ton, Usher,  Yarrow,  Knapp,  Trowbridge,  Shattuck, 
Wheeler,  Townsend,  Leroy-Beaulieu,  Berard,  Anatole 
France,  Jaures,  Clemenceau,  Pressense,  Quillard,  de 
Contenson,  de  Roberty,  Rolin-Jaquemyns,  Favre,  Black- 
well,  Barrows,  Howe,  Clement,  Garrison,  Storey,  Ames, 
Mead,  Dole,  and  others  whose  names  will  suggest  them- 
selves to  those  familiar  with  this  history,  are  destined 
to  be  immortally  linked  with  the  names  of  the  Arme- 
nian patriots  and  to  glorify  the  walls  of  the  future 
Armenian  Pantheon. 

Note  6 
The  fact  that  only  two  years  later  America  rescued 
Cuba  from  the  tyranny  of  Spain  is  proof  in  itself  that 
had  she  not  been,  in  a  way,  inhibited  by  her  traditional 
policy  of  non-interference  in  European  affairs,  she 
would  have  flown  to  arms  in  defense  of  Armenia,  re- 
gardless of  the  fact  that  she  was  under  no  "treaty" 
obligations  whatever.  Had  she  been  true  to  the  vision 
of  her  prophets,  :  !ie  would,  even  as  it  was,  have  taken 
that  step,  and  by  assuming  the  rdle  of  moral  leadership 
which  she  now  enjoys,  have  added  to  her  own  spiritual 
force  the  strength  of  popular  England,  France,  Italy, 
and  who  knows  what  other  countries. 


154  THE    TRAGEDY    OF   ARMENIA 

Note  7 
Is    it    anything    more    than    a    coincidence    that    the 
persecution  of  the  Jews  in  Russia  took  on  at  this  time 
the  violent  character  of  earlier  days — that  Kishinef  and 
Kief  followed  Van,  Our  fa,  and  Sassoun? 

Note  8 

Even  now,  the  privilege  of  acquaintance  with  some  of 
the  works  of  these,  and  others  of  the  poets,  is  available 
through  Miss  Blackwell's  admirable  translations  which 
appear  in  a  volume  entitled  "Armenian  Poems,"  now  on 
sale  at  the  office  of  the  Armenian  and  Syrian  Relief 
Committee  at  3  Joy  Street,  Boston.  The  price  of  this 
book  is  $1.00  and  the  entire  proceeds  are  devoted  by 
Miss  Blackwell  to  the  Relief  Fund. 

Note  9 

The  genuineness  of  the  Armenian  desire  to  co-operate 
with  the  Turks  in  the  new  government  is  testified  to  by 
all  foreigners  who  were  in  Turkey  at  the  time  of  the 
Proclamation.  One  of  these,  Mr.  Herbert  Adams  Gib- 
bons, author  of  "The  New  Map  of  Europe,"  etc.,  re- 
marks, concerning  both  the  antecedents  and  consequences 
of  the  "revolution,"  that  the  Young  Turk  agitators  had 
been  encouraged  and  even  sometimes  supported  by 
Armenians,  who  "took  them  in,  fed  them  and  clothed 
them  and  subsidized  their  propaganda." 

"I  was  present  at  the  overthrow  of  the  Hamidian 
regime,"  he  writes.  "I  saw  the  Young  Turk  exiles  re- 
turning triumphant  to  Constantinople  and  Smyrna  and 


NOTES  155 

Beirut.  I  saw  Mohammedan  Mullahs  and  Ulema 
fraternize  with  Armenian  priests.  I  saw  them  riding 
in  carriages  together.  I  saw  them  kiss  Christians  on 
the  cheeks  and  call  them  brothers.  Then,  immediately, 
remorselessly,  and  without  hesitation  the  Young  Turks 
turned  on  those  who  had  helped  them  and  whom  they 
had  used  to  bring  about  the  Revolution.  Not  many 
months  of  the  new  regime  had  passed  before  we  who 
were  on  the  ground  in  Turkey  realized  that  there  was 
absolutely  no  difference  between  Young  Turks  and  Old 
Turks.  By  'peace  and  liberty'  the  Young  Turks  meant 
peace  and  liberty  for  Moslems — and  not  even  for  all 
Moslems !  Albanian  and  Arab  Moslems  were  given  to 
understand  as  fully  as  Armenians  and  Greeks  and 
Syrians  and  Jews  that  Turkey  was  Turkish." 

Note  10 
For  this  document  and  for  the  information  contained 
in  the  paragraph  which  follows  it,  as  well  as  for  other 
material,  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Mikael  Varandian's  ex- 
cellent book,  "L'Armenie  et  la  Question  Armenienne." 

Note  11 
I  have  taken  the  description  of  the  cartoon  in 
"Karagoz"  verbatim  from  "Armenia  and  the  War"  by 
Mr.  A.  P.  Hacobian  of  London.  To  his  moving  and  able 
presentation,  I  also  owe  other  material  as  well  as  much 
inspiration. 

Note  12 
Mr.  A.  P.  Hacobian,  in  his  book  "Armenia  and  the 
War,"  quotes  the  following  from  the  Retch,  organ  of  the 


156  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

Constitutional  Democrats  in  Russia,  issue  of  July  28, 
1916   (O.  S.): 

"The  scheme  of  settling  Russian  emigrants  in  the 
occupied  parts  of  Turkish  Armenia,  recently  discussed 
in  the  Duma,  is  being  energetically  carried  out.  This 
matter  has  been  the  subject  of  a  lively  discussion 
between  the  Emigration  and  Military  authorities. 
Investigations  are  in  progress,  not  only  in  the  districts 
near  the  frontier,  but  also  further  afield,  the  fertile 
Mush  valley  being  the  object  of  special  attention. 
Agricultural  Battalions  have  been  in  course  of  organiza- 
tion since  last  autumn  and  already  number  5,000  men. 
More  will  be  found  presently.  Armenians  and  Georgians 
are  excluded.  The  task  of  these  young  arms  is  to  culti- 
vate the  fields  on  which  investigations  have  been  carried 
out,  under  the  supervision  of  agricultural  experts,  in 
order  to  facilitate  the  provisioning  of  the  army.  The 
question  of  emigrating  the  families  of  these  men  is  also 
under  consideration. 

"Side  by  side  with  this  scheme  there  exists  another 
scheme  of  settling  Cossacks  in  Turkish  Armenia,  on 
similar  lines  to  what  has  already  been  done  in  Northern 
Caucasus  with  good  results.  Those  who  have  conceived 
these  schemes  have  in  view  the  creation  of  a  sufficiently 
broad  zone  inhabited  by  Russians,  separating  the  Rus- 
sian Armenians  from  the  Turkish  Armenians. 

"Armenian  refugees  are  gradually  returning  to  their 
country  and  resuming  the  work  of  cultivating  their  lands. 
They  usually  settle  in  the  villages  that  have  suffered 
least,  their  own  villages  having  been  totally  ruined. 

"To    avoid    confusion,    the    Grand    Duke    Nicholas 


NOTES  157 

issued  a  Ukase  in  March  last,  warning  these  returned 
refugees  to  keep  themselves  in  readiness  to  vacate  these 
districts  on  the  establishment  of  Russian  Civil  Adminis- 
tration. In  the  same  Ukase  the  Commander-in-Chief 
of  the  Caucasian  Army  has  decreed  that  the  vacant  lands 
in  the  plains  of  Alashkert,  Diadin  and  Bayazid  may  be 
given  in  hire  up  to  the  time  of  the  return  of  their  rightful 
owners.  General  Yudenitch  has  issued  orders,  however, 
prohibiting  the  settlement  in  these  places  of  any  other 
immigrants  except  Russians  and  Cossacks.  Only  those 
natives  are  permitted  to  return  who  are  able  to  prove 
ownership  of  land  or  property  by  legal  documents.  This 
arrangement  makes  it  impossible  for  the  natives  (Arme- 
nians) to  return  to  their  homes  because  it  is  ridiculous 
to  speak  of  title-deeds  when  dealing  with  land  in  Turkey ; 
and  as  for  other  documents  which  prove  ownership, 
these  always   get  lost  during  flight. 

"In  the  above  three  plains,  also  in  parts  of  the  plain 
of  Bassain,  the  surviving  native  inhabitants  are  debarred 
from  returning  to  their  homes  and  resuming  their  peace- 
ful occupations." 

Note  13 
The  complicity  of  the  German  government  with  that 
of  the  Turk  in  the  crime  against  the  Armenians  is  evi- 
dent even  on  the  face  of  things,  since  the  Turks  would 
not  have  dared  to  work  in  opposition  to  the  will  of  their 
masters.  Nor  could  they  have  secured  the  active  co- 
operation of  the  German  officers  in  Turkey  had  there 
not  been  strict  accord  between  them.  Such  a  statement 
as    this    by    Signor   Gorrini,    in   the   interview    already 


158  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

referred  to,  is  typical  of  many  directly  corroborative 
statements  made  by  foreign  and  other  eye-witnesses 
who  were  in  Turkey  during  the  perpetration  of  the 
crime:  "  .  .  .  the  Germans  and  the  Committee  (of 
Union  of  Progress)  constitute  the  one  genuine,  solid 
organization  at  present  existing  in  Turkey — a  masterly 
and  most  rigorous  organization,  which  does  not  hesitate 
to  use  any  weapon  whatever;  an  organization  of 
audacity,  of  terror,  and  of  mysterious,  ferocious 
revenge." 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

For  information  concerning  Armenian  history,  the 
Armenian  question,  the  Near  Eastern  question,  travel 
in  Armenia,  Armenia  in  the  War,  Armenian  history 
and  art,  the  reader  is  referred  to  the  following  works, 
to  which  the  author  wishes  to  acknowledge  her  indebted- 
ness. 
In  English: 

The  History  of  Vartan,  and  of  the  Battle  of  the 
Armenians:  an  Account  of  the  Religious  Wars 
between  the  Persians  and  Armenians,  by  Eliseeus, 
Bishop  of  the  Amadunians.  Translated  from  the  Arme- 
nian by  C.  F.  Neumann.     London,  1830. 

History  of  Armenia,  by  Father  Michael  Chamich. 
Translated  from  the  original  Armenian  by  Johannes 
Avdall.     Calcutta,  1827. 

Researches  in  Armenia,  by  E.  Smith.    Boston,  1833. 

Travels  and  Researches  in  Mesopotamia  and 
Armenia,  by  W.  F.  Ainsworth.     London,  1842. 

Travels  in  Armenia,  by  A.  H.  Layard.  London, 
1853. 

The  Armenian  Church — History,  Liturgy,  Doc- 
trines and  Ceremonies,  by  E.  F.  Fortescue.  London, 
J.  T.  Hayes,  1872. 

Armenia  and  the  Armenians,  by  R.  D.  J.  Issaver- 
dens.    Venice,  1878. 


160  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

Life  and  Adventures  in  Trebizond,  Erzerum, 
Tabriz,  by  A.  Vambery.     London,  1886. 

Armenia  and  the  Campaign  of  1877,  by  C.  B.  Nor- 
man.    London,   1878. 

The  Armenians,  or  the  People  of  Ararat,  by  M. 
C.  Gabrielian.    Allen,  Lane  &  Scott,  Philadelphia,  1892. 

Twenty  Years  of  the  Armenian  Question,  by 
James  Bryce,  in  his  Transcaucasia  and  Ararat,  pp. 
446-525.     1890. 

Armenia  and  the  Armenians,  by  E.  J.  Dillon  (a 
section  in  his  Russian  Characteristics). 

The  Rule  of  the  Turk,  by  Frederick  D.  Greene. 
Putnam,  New  York,  1896. 

Turkey  and  the  Armenian  Atrocities,  by  E.  M. 
Bliss. 

England's  Responsibility  toward  Armenia,  by 
Malcolm  McColl.     Longmans,  London,  1895. 

Through  Armenia  on  Horseback,  by  George  H. 
Hepworth.     Dutton,  New  York,  1898. 

Armenia:  Travels  and  Studies,  by  H.  F.  B.  Lynch. 
Longmans  Green,  London,   1901. 

The  Armenian  Awakening:  a  History  of  the 
Armenian  Church,  by  Leon  Arpee.  University  of 
Chicago  Press,  1909. 

On  the  Cross  of  Europe's  Imperialism:  Armenia 
Crucified,  by  Diana  A.  Apcar.  Fukuin  Printing  Co., 
Yokohama,  1918. 

The  Treatment  of  Armenians  in  the  Ottoman 
Empire,  1915-16.  Documents  presented  to  Viscount 
Grey  by  Viscount  Bryce,  with  a  preface  by  Viscount 
Bryce.     English  Blue  Book,  London,  1916. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  161 

Armenian  Atrocities:  The  Murder  of  a  Nation, 
by  Arnold  J.  Toynbee.  Hodder  &  Stoughton,  London, 
1915. 

The  Blackest  Page  of  Modern  History;  Events 
in  Armenia  in  1915,  the  Facts  and  the  Responsibili- 
ties, by  Herbert  Adams  Gibbons.  Putnam,  New  York 
and  London,  1916. 

The  Story  of  the  Armenian  Dynasties,  by  James 
L.  Barton.     The  Independent,  March  5th,  1899. 

The  Reconstruction  of  Poland  and  the  Near 
East;  Problems  of  Peace,  by  Herbert  Adams  Gibbons. 
Century,  New  York,  1917. 

Armenia  and  the  War,  by  A.  P.  Hacobian,  with  a 
preface  by  Viscount  Bryce.  Hodder  &  Stoughton,  Lon- 
don and  New  York,  1917. 

The  Turkish  Empire:  its  Growth  and  Decay,  by 
Lord  Eversley.     Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  New  York,  1917. 

Travel  and  Politics  in  Armenia,  by  Noel  E.  Bux- 
ton and  Harold  J.  Buxton,  with  an  introduction  by 
Viscount  Bryce  and  a  contribution  on  Armenian  History 
and  Culture  by  Aram  Ram.  Smith,  Elder  &  Co.,  Lon- 
don, 1914. 

Armenia  Past  and  Present:  a  Study  and  a  Fore- 
cast, by  W.  L.  Williams,  with  an  introduction  by  T.  P. 
O'Connor,  M.  P.    P.  S.  King  &  Son,  Ltd.,  London,  1916. 

The  Pan-German  Plot  Unmasked,  by  Andre 
Cheradame,  with  an  introduction  by  the  Earl  of  Cromer. 
Scribners,  London,  1917. 

Two  War  Years  in  Constantinople:  Sketches  of 
German  and  Young  Turkish  Ethics  and  Politics,  by 


162  THE    TRAGEDY    OF   ARMENIA 

Harry  Stuermer.     Translated  from  the  German  by  E. 
Allen  and  the  author.     Doran,  New  York,   1917. 

The  War  and  the  Bagdad  Railway:  the  Story  of 
Asia  Minor  and  its  Relation  to  the  Present  Con- 
flict, by  Morris  Jastrow,  Jr.     Lippincott,  1917. 

The  Near  East  from  Within,  anonymous.  Dutton, 
New  York,  1918. 

The  Golden  Maiden  and  Other  Folk  and  Fairy 
Tales  told  in  Armenia,  by  A.  G.  Seklemian,  with  an 
introduction  by  Alice  Stone  Blackwell.  Helman  Taylor 
Co.,  Cleveland,  O.,  1898. 

Armenian  Poems,  rendered  into  English  verse  by 
Alice  Stone  Blackwell.  Armenian  Relief  Comm.,  3  Joy 
St.,  Boston,  1917. 

Armenian  Legends  and  Poems,  compiled  and  illus- 
trated by  Zabelle  C.  Boyajian.  With  an  introduction  by 
Viscount  Bryce,  and  a  contribution  on  Armenia,  its 
Epics,  Folk  Songs  and  Mediaeval  Poetry  by  Aram  Raffi. 
Dent,  London,  1916. 

Armenian  Literature,  with  an  introduction  by  Rob- 
ert Arnot.     Revised  Edition,  London,   1901. 

Armenian  Poems:  Metrical  Version,  by  Robert  Arnot. 
London,  1901. 
In  French: 

Histoire  d'Armenie,  by  Moses  de  Khoren.  Trans- 
lated from  ancient  Armenian  by  P.  E.  Le  Vaillant  de 
Florival.     Venice,  1841. 

L'Armenie  et  la  Question  Armenienne,  by  Mikael 
Varandian.  With  a  preface  by  Victor  Berard.  Kava- 
nagh  et  Cie,  Laval,  France,  1917. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  163 

Contes  Armeniens,  Traduits  de  l'Armenien  Mod- 
erne,  by  Frederic  Macler.     Leroux,  Paris,  1903. 

Mekhitaristes  de  Saint  Lazare,  Histoire  d'Arme- 
nie,  Litterature  Armenienne,  by  Paul  Emile  Le 
Vaillant  de  Florival.  Typographic  Armenienne  de  Saint 
Lazare,  Venice. 

L'Armenie  Chretienne  et  sa  Litterature,  by  Felix 
Neve.     C.  Peters,  Louvain,  1886. 

L'Armenie,  son  Histoire,  sa  Litterature,  son  Role 
en  l'Orient,  with  an  Introduction  by  Anatole  France, 
by  Archag  Tchobanian.  Societe  du  Mercure  de  France, 
Paris,  1897. 

Poemes  Armeniens,  Anciens  et  Modernes,  Precedes 
d'une  Etude  de  Gabriel  Mourey  sur  la  Poesie  et  l'Art 
Armeniens,  by  Archag  Tchobanian.  Librairie  A. 
Charles,  1902. 

Chants  Populaires  Armeniens,  Preface  de  Paul 
Adam,  by  Archag  Tchobanian.  Societe  d'Editions 
Litteraires  et  Artistiques,  Paris,  1903. 

Petite  Bibliotheque  Armenienne,  Publiee  sous  la 
Direction  de  Frederic  Macler.     Paris. 

L'Orient  Inedit — Legendes  et  Traditions  Arme- 
niennes,  by  Minas  Tcheraz.     Leroux,  Paris,  1912. 

Etudes  sur  la  Miniature  Armenienne,  by  Seraphin 
Abdullah  and  Frederic  Macler,  Paris,  1909. 

Au  Milieu  des  Massacres — Journal  de  la  Femme 
d'un  Consul  de  France  en  Armenie,  by  Emilie  Carlier 
Juven,  Paris,  1903. 

Also  to  the  following  journals:  The  New  Armenia, 
949  Broadway,  New  York;  The  Armenian  Herald,  Old 


164  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   ARMENIA 

South  Building,  Boston;  La  Voix  de  VArmenie,  30  Rue 
Jacob,  Paris. 

(A  complete  bibliography  of  the  Armenian  dis- 
asters, compiled  by  Prof.  W.  W.  Rockwell,  may  be  had 
from  the  American  Committee  for  Armenian  Relief,  One 
Madison  Avenue,  New  York  City,  price  10  cents.) 


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